Preamble

The House met at a Quarter before Three of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

Private Bills [Lords] (Standing Orders not previously inquired into complied with), —Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills. That, in the case of the following Bill, originating in the Lords, and referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders not previously inquired into, which are applicable thereto, have been complied with, namely:

Blackpool Improvement Bill [Lords].

Ordered, That the Bill be read a second time.

Private Bills (Standing Orders not previously inquired into not complied with). —Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bill, referred on the Second Reading thereof, the Standing Orders not previously inquired into, which are applicable thereto, have not been complied with, namely:

Ammanford Gas Bill.

Ordered, That the Report be referred to the Select Committee on Standing Orders.

Birmingham Corporation Bill,

To be read the third time upon Monday next.

Stourport Gas Bill [Lords],

Read the third time, and passed, with Amendments.

LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (TRAMWAYS AND IMPROVEMENTS).

Mr. VAUGHAN-DAVIES: I beg to move
That the Resolution of the Select Committee on Standing Orders of the 28th May with respect to the London County Council (Tramways and improvements) (Petition for Bill) be referred hack to the said Committee, and that they have power to inquire whether there are any special circumstances
which render it just and expedient that the Standing Orders should be dispensed with in respect of Part V. of the Bill referred to in the Petition and the provisions relating thereto.
This matter now relates only to the omnibuses, the rest having been withdrawn—

Lieut.-Colonel Sir F. HALL: I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, but we cannot hear a word the hon. Gentleman is saying.

Mr. VAUGHAN-DAVIES: The Bill originally came before the Standing Orders Committee, and then dealt with a very large area outside that of the London County Council. Since then the county council has withdrawn all the Clauses relating to outside areas, and are now asking simply for powers of working for omnibuses within their own area. The Bill now simply and solely deals with the London County Council's area, and their omnibus arrangements. I hope, under these circumstances, the House will let the Resolution pass.

Sir F. HALL: I heard there was some objection, but if it is agreed to, I have nothing more to say.

Question put, and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions — PEACE TERMS.

TREATY WITH GERMANY.

Lieut.-Colonel MALONE: 1.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether a Sub-committee has been appointed by the Peace Conference to supervise the execution of the Treaty with Germany; and whether he will state the name of the British representative thereon?

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Cecil Harmsworth): The answer to the hon. and gallant Member's question is in the affirmative. Sir Eyre Crowe, Assistant Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs has been appointed British representative.

BALTIC PROVINCES.

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: 2.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what is the present position of General von der Goltz and Baron von Mantcuffel and the forces under their
command in the Baltic provinces; are they obeying Marshal Foch's directions to evacuate these territories; and what governments are in control at Riga and Libau, respectively, at the present time?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: As a result of a demand made by Marshal Foch to the German Government, General von der Goltz and the forces under his command are now under orders to complete the evacuation of the Baltic without further delay.
According to the latest information Libau has already been evacuated, and in Riga all the town east of the Dvina is now clear of Germans, and the withdrawal on the western bank is also proceeding satisfactorily.
The Lettish Provisional Government, under the presidency of M. Ulmanis, has now been transferred from Libau to Riga, where they have taken control of the administration.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Will the hon. Gentleman reply to my question as to Libau: what Government is in power there?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: The Government has been transferred from Libau to Riga.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Am I to understand that M. Ulmanis's Government is in power at Libau still?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: I should think so; but if my hon. and gallant Friend wants further information I shall try to get it.

Lieut. -Commander KENWORTHY: Arising out of that answer, may I ask whether there has been a request from Von der Goltz to join the Government at Libau?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: I think I must have notice of that.

Oral Answers to Questions — PERSIA (EX-SHAH).

Sir J. D. REES: 3.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the ex-Shah of Persia has returned to that country; and, if so, whether any political movements have resulted or disturbances have occurred?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: His Majesty's Government have received no information to that effect. Inquiries are, however, being made.

Oral Answers to Questions — PASSPORTS.

Sir J. D. REES: 4.
asked the Under secretary of State for Foreign Affairs why registration cards are required by the passport officers from applicants for passports?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: Registration cards were required as part of the evidence of the applicants position under the Military Service Acts. The production of them is no longer insisted upon.

Oral Answers to Questions — ASIA MINOR.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 5.
asked the Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether it is intended to consult the wishes of the inhabitants of the proposed mandatory areas in Asia Minor?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: I am not aware that any decision has been reached in Paris with regard to mandatory areas in Asia Minor, nor do I know whether it is the intention of the Peace Conference to take any steps to consult the inhabitants of these areas directly.
But I may remind the hon. and gallant Member that the wholesale deportations effected by the Turks during the War would make it very difficult to carry out satisfactorily an inquiry of the nature indicated, at any rate for some time to come.

Mr. FOREMAN: 6.
asked the Under secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in. what parts of Asia Minor any of the Entente Powers now maintain garrisons; and what are the agreed conditions on which they do so?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: The Greeks are in occupation of Smyrna, Aivali, and a considerable part of the Aidin Vilayet. The Italians have a force at Adalia and detachments at various points on the southern and south-western coast of Asia. Minor.
I am not in a position to give the information asked for in the last part of the question.

Oral Answers to Questions — COMMERCIAL PROPAGANDA.

Mr. FOREMAN: 7.
asked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what allocations to public funds have been approved by the Treasury for commercial propaganda in various parts of the world?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: No sums are specifically provided in the Estimates for 1919–20 for commercial propaganda abroad. It is, of course, one of the duties of the commercial counsellors and secretaries in foreign countries and of His Majesty's Trade Commissioners in the various parts of the Empire to make known locally the commercial and industrial activities of the United Kingdom, but no portion of their expenditure is definitely earmarked for this part of their work.

Oral Answers to Questions — MONTENEGRO.

Mr. R. McNEILL: 8.
asked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the King of Montenegro was the only head of an Allied State who did not receive a message of congratulation from His Majesty on the signing of the Peace with Germany; and, if so, why His Majesty was advised to withhold such congratulations from a sovereign who declared war against the Central Powers at the outset of the War, and whose country has suffered devastation and loss in consequence of its steadfast adherence to the alliance?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: His Majesty sent messages of congratulation only to those Powers who are signatories of the Treaty of Peace. As Montenegro did not sign the Peace Treaty, no telegram was sent to King Nicolas.

Mr. McNEILL: Was Montenegro the only one of the Allied nations to whom the message was not sent—were not any sent to China and Brazil?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: It was only sent to those Powers that were signatories of the Treaty.

Mr. F. C. THOMSON: Is it not a fact that Montenegro was anxious to join the kingdoms of the Serbs, Croats, and Slavines who do not regard King Nicolas as their representative?

Oral Answers to Questions — NAVAL AND MILITARY PENSIONS AND GRANTS.

DISABLEMENT PENSIONS.

Lieut.-Colonel W. GUINNESS: 9.
asked the Pensions Minister if he will state how many final pensions have now been granted in cases of partial disability other than the loss of a limb; and whether, in
view of the inconvenience caused to men by frequent medical examinations, he will arrange that pensions may be granted without further delay where repeated examinations show no change in conditions of disability?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of PENSIONS (Colonel Sir James Craig): Approximately 25,000 permanent pensions have been granted for partial disability. I cannot say how many of the pensions so granted are for disabilities other than loss of limb but the number is probably very email. Pension is made permanent as soon as the medical advisers certify that the disability has reached a final and stationary condition.

Lieut.-Colonel GUINNESS: Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that there are very general complaints amongst those affected that they are put to great inconvenience and an unnecessary amount of hanging about by repeated examinations that show no change; and, in view of the fact that these people in many cases have been disabled for nearly five years, is it not borne out by the answer that very few of these pensions have yet been granted?

Sir J. CRAIG: I may say that cuts both ways. Sometimes it is very desirable indeed that the pensioners should have further examinations in their own interests. Of course, it is entirely a medical matter, where we are very much guided by our medical advisers. The Director-General of Medical Service of the Ministry—a man of great ability—must be relied upon.

Lieut.-Colonel W. GUINNESS: 10.
asked the Pensions Minister whether the present temporary 20 per cent. increase on all disablement pensions will be made permanent?

Sir J. CRAIG: The bonus of 20 per cent. was temporary. I am, however, able to announce that the period of its currency has been extended to the end of the present year, before the expiration of which my right hon. Friend will make a further statement.

NEW WARRANT.

Colonel ASHLEY: 12.
asked the Pensions Minister whether the new Warrant which is to extend to men wounded or disabled in wars fought prior to 4th August, 1914, the advantages of the Pensions Warrant of
1918 also extends to all men who are to profit by the new Warrant the Regulations for treatment, training, and alternative pensions, as laid down for the great War?

Sir J. CRAIG: The answer is in the negative.

TOTALLY DISABLED MEN.

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: 14.
asked the Pensions Minister whether the present scale of pensions granted to totally disabled men is sufficient to support life at the present high price of all necessary commodities; and whether the claim to an alternative pension, based on pre-war earnings, in many cases take too long to prove to be of any practical value?

Sir J. CRAIG: The adequacy of the present scale of pensions, including the present basis of pre-war earnings for alternative pensions, is under investigation by the Select Committee, and my right hon. Friend would prefer not to anticipate their Report.

MINISTRY OF PENSIONS (STAFF).

Lieut.-Colonel ARCHER-SHEE: 15.
asked what is the present number of the male staff of the Ministry; and how many of that number served in the War?

Sir J. CRAIG: The total male staff of the Ministry at the present date, exclusive of the staffs of hospitals, institutions, and local war pensions committees is approximately 3,280, of whom 2,670 (or 81 per cent.) have served in the War.

OFFICERS' WARRANT (RETIRED PAY).

Mr. PENNEFATHER: 16.
asked the Pensions Minister whether he can make any statement on the subject of increasing the allowances payable to officers under going treatment, having regard to the in equalities existing in this respect between the officers' warrant and the men's?

Sir J. CRAIG: I am glad to be able to announce the following extension of Article 6 of the Officers Warant:
In special circumstances maximum retired pay will be given to an officer (whether married or single) who is certified to be incapable of work and for whom non-institutional treatment is recommended by the medical authorities.
In the case of an officer receiving institutional treatment an allowance not exceeding £50 a year will be granted to the wife, or an allowance not exceeding £40
a year to a dependent relative (as defined in the Royal Warrant), provided that in either case there is pecuniary need.
In cases where it is certified that a disabled officer should, in consequence of his disablement, undergo medical treatment in circumstances which do not render him unable to provide for his own support and that of his family, but require him to absent himself from his work on one more occasions in a week, he may be granted, in addition to any pension, an allowance not exceeding 20s. a week for the time he is required to absent himself.

TEMPORARY PENSIONS.

Mr. BRIANT: 18.
asked if a discharged soldier receiving a temporary pension for service during the late War is eligible to continue to receive at the same time the life pension which was granted for previous service?

Sir J. CRAIG: If the life pension were granted purely for length of service, or for disability other than that for which the temporary pension is awarded, the two pensions can be held concurrently. The combined awards in respect of disability must not, however, exceed the total disablement rate of pension.

Oral Answers to Questions — SOLDIERS (MEDICAL TREATMENT).

Lieut. - Colonel W. GUINNESS: 11.
asked the Pensions Minister whether he is aware that under existing regulations no provision is made for admission, to suitable institutions of men discharged from the Army on account of neurasthenia, melancholia, and epilepsy in Ireland; whether melancholia cases brought on by shell-shock and amputation of limbs have in consequence been admitted to lunatic asylums in Ireland where they are treated as pauper lunatics; and whether he will take steps to provide maintenance and treatment for such cases in special institutions?

Sir J. CRAIG: There are two institutions in Ireland available for neurasthenics. As far as I am aware, there are no epileptic colonies in Ireland with which arrangements for the reception of discharged men can be made, and it is therefore necessary to bring the few cases of epilepsy to England. Men are only placed in asylums if they are certified under the Lunacy Laws, and I am now arranging that men so certified shall be treated as Service patients.

Lieut.-Colonel GUINNESS: What, in effect, will be the difference between the treatment of Service patients and the ordinary pauper patient?

Sir J. CRAIG: Oh, very great. Special arrangements will be made by the medical officers. There is a distinct difference between the two classes.

Oral Answers to Questions — ARMY RESERVE.

Colonel ASHLEY: 13.
asked the Pensions Minister whether he is aware that Section B men of the Army Reserve whose pensions have been assessed at 5s. 6d. per week are being told that they must suffer reduction of this by the amount of their Reserve pay, or 3s. 6d. per week, thus leaving them 2s. only as pension; whether it is his decision that Reserve pay given in consideration of liability for further service should be counted as part pension for disablement incurred in past service; and, if so, whether this is at variance with the policy which permitted all re-enlisted pensioners during the War to draw both their pensions and their full regimental rates of pay?

Sir J. CRAIG: Under the Demobilisation Regulations issued by the Army Council a soldier serving on a normal regular engagement, and not merely for the period of the War, was automatically reverted to Class B or D of the Army Reserve to complete his engagement. At the same time he was given an opportunity of claiming a disablement pension. If the claim was substantiated, the transfer to the Reserve was cancelled and his discharge carried out as from date of leaving the Colours. Pension would be awarded from that date and, regardless of the amount of pension awarded, it would be necessary to recover the Army Reserve pay already issued, and the soldier would thus be in exactly the same position as if he had been discharged or transferred to Class Z at once instead of being transferred to Class B of the Reserve.

Colonel ASHLEY: 55.
asked the Prime Minister whether it is still the rule that a Section B Army Reservist must purchase his discharge from the Reserve before he can be given an appointment in the Civil Service; and, if so, whether he is prepared to make an exception in favour of those who have served in the War?

Mr. BALDWIN (Joint Financial Secretary to the Treasury): I am informed that there is no such general rule applying to the Service as a whole. If the hon. and Gallant Member will send me particulars of the case he has in mind, I will have it inquired into.

Oral Answers to Questions — BANFF PENSIONS COMMITTEE.

Major McKENZIE WOOD: 17.
asked the Pensions Minister whether his attention has been drawn to the action of the County of Banff Pensions Committee in appointing as their permanent secretary, without advertising the post in the public Press, a person who had not served in any branch of His Majesty's Forces during the War; whether the action of the committee is a breach of the undertaking by the Government that discharged sailors, soldiers, and airmen will receive special consideration in the filling of public appointments; and what action he proposes to take to ensure that the policy of the Government is carried out in this and other similar cases?

Sir J. CRAIG: I am obtaining information on this matter from the Regional Director for Scotland, and will communicate the result to the hon. and Gallant Member. As my hon. and Gallant Friend is aware, my right hon. Friend has given specific instructions that preference shall be given in all principal appointments to officers and men who have served in the War?

Oral Answers to Questions — BEGGING (DISCHARGED SOLDIERS).

Sir CLEMENT KINLOCH-COOKE: 21.
asked the Pensions Minister whether his attention has been called to a discharged soldier, wearing a wound stripe, who for the last week has been standing, bare headed, in the Strand and by means of a cap placed on the ground is soliciting alms from the passers by; that he is accompanied by an organ, on which is displayed a card stating that he is suffering from neurasthenia and has dependants. to support; whether he will cause inquiries to be made into the case; whether he s aware that during the last day or so another man with an organ has also made his appearance near the same spot; and whether these exhibitions are to be allowed to continue?

Sir J. CRAIG: Inquiry is being made to ascertain whether these men are drawing the pensions to which they are entitled. The hon. Member will, however, recognise that beyond seeing that the men have their due, my right hon. Friend can take no steps to prevent their appealing to the public in this manner.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: Does the hon. and gallant Gentleman think this man should be allowed to put up a card of that kind in the public street without some remonstrance?

Sir J. CRAIG: I am afraid that, as a Ministry, we have no power to interfere in a matter of that kind. We have, I am sorry to say, no power to prevent a man in receipt of a pension supplementing it by putting up a card begging at the corner of the street.

Oral Answers to Questions — IRELAND.

ASSAULT ON SOLDIERS, RATHCLARIN.

Mr. STEWART: 22.
asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether he can give the House any information with regard to the outrage at Rathclarin, county Cork, on 19th June, when a patrol of five soldiers and a constable were attacked by a large body of men; whether four of the soldiers were injured; whether their weapons and equipment were carried away by the assailants; and whether any arrests have been made?

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL for IRELAND (Mr. Denis Henry): A military patrol, consisting of one corporal and four privates of the Essex Regiment, accompanied by Constable Daniel McMorrow of the Royal Irish Constabulary, were attacked and disarmed at Rathclarin on the 19th June. The patrol had been to Burren Pier, where timber had been thrown into the sea, and when about halfway home the party were attacked by sixteen men, disguised, who suddenly rushed upon the patrol from the end of a laneway. The soldiers were armed with rifles, bayonets and ten rounds each of ball cartridge, but the constable was unarmed. After a short struggle the patrol was overpowered, disarmed, and tied together with ropes, the rifles, bayonets and ammunition being taken away. Three of the soldiers were wounded, but not seriously. Up to the present no arrest has been made.

SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS.

Mr. LYNN: 24.
asked the Chief Secretary whether he is aware that the priority of treatment given to English and Scottish educational reform, with the consequent improved conditions of English and Scottish teachers, has resulted in Irish secondary schools losing many of their best teachers; and whether he will, without prejudice to the larger policy of educational reform, take steps to save Irish schools from the loss of these teachers consequent on the favoured treatment of Great Britain?

Mr. HENRY: Representations in this sense have been made to my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary. The Bill, which it is hoped will place Irish teachers on as good a footing as English and Scottish teachers, will be introduced shortly.

Mr. LYNN: Can my right hon. Friend say when the Bill is likely to be introduced?

Mr. HENRY: My right hon. Friend is not at present able to give the date on which it will be introduced, as there are a great many matters dealing with Irish affairs which occupy his attention.

Mr. LYNN: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the great difficulty that has arisen in Ireland on account of this favoured treatment in Great Britain?

Mr. HENRY: My right hon. Friend is quite aware of that matter, and he will do everything in his power to meet the difficulty.

Mr. DEVLIN: 27.
asked whether it is proposed to extend the proposed pension benefits recommended by the Killanin Committee to teachers who have retired. since the appointment of that Committee or to all retired teachers?

Mr. HENRY: My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary would ask the hon. Member to await the introduction of the Bill.

Mr. DEVLIN: Can the right hon. Gentleman give us any information as to whether these retired teachers will be included in the Bill?

Mr. HENRY: I am not able to give that information, but I will communicate with my right hon. Friend.

LAND SETTLEMENT (IRISH SOLDIERS).

MAJOR NEWMAN: 25.
asked whether any legislation to facilitate the settlement on the land in Ireland of Irishmen who fought as volunteers in the late War is to be introduced; and, if not, will he say how the Government intend to redeem the pledge to Irish soldiers made by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland?

Mr. HENRY: The answer is in the affirmative.

Oral Answers to Questions — SPEED LIMIT (DUBLIN PROSECUTION).

Mr. SEDDON: 26.
asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether his attention has been drawn to a prosecution against a soldier for exceeding the speed limit, in the course of which Major Ball, an official of the Chief Crown Solicitor's office, stated that he was authorised by the competent military authority to object to a civil tribunal trying the case under the Defence of the Realm Regulations, and refused to give any special reasons for making such a claim; and whether such a claim was recognised or approved of by the Irish Government, and how many Irish officials are entitled to claim such immunity from the law?

Mr. HENRY: I can only refer the hon. Member to the reply given to a similar question yesterday by the Financial Secretary to the War Office in reply to the hon. Member for East Donegal (Mr. E. Kelly). I desire to call my hon. and gallant Friend's attention to the fact that Major Ball is an official not of the Chief Crown Solicitor's, office but of the War Office.

Mr. MacVEAGH: Can he say whether this claim was recognised or approved by the Irish Government, and if the Irish officials are entitled to such immunity?

Mr. HENRY: So far as that part of the question is concerned, the claim is not recognised or approved by the Irish Law Officers, and so far as I am concerned no Irish official is entitled to claim such immunity.

Mr. MacVEAGH: Could my right hon. Friend say if it is not approved by the Irish Law Officers how a claim of this kind for immunity for soldiers who break the law is recognised by any Irish Court, acting under the authority of the Irish Government?

Mr. HENRY: It is recognised in this case by the divisional police magistrate who acts as a judge, and over whom we have no control.

Mr. MacVEAGH: Can proceedings not be taken to override that decision, seeing that the Law Officers think that decision is illegal?

Mr. HENRY: I ask my hon. and learned Friend to wait until the person representing the War Office answers the question, and at the appropriate time I will see that steps are taken.

Oral Answers to Questions — HUNGER STRIKE (BELFAST SOCIALISTS).

Mr. DEVLIN: 28.
asked the Chief Secretary whether his attention has been drawn to the case of the three members of the Socialist party in Belfast who have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment in, connection with a meeting at the Customs House, Belfast; whether he is aware that these men have gone on hunger strike since their confinement as a protest, against being classed as ordinary criminals; and whether he will take action to reduce the terms of the sentences or, failing their immediate release, will he order these men to be treated as political prisoners?

Mr. HENRY: This case is under consideration.

Oral Answers to Questions — DREYFUS AND COMPANY, LIMITED.

Major NEWMAN: 29.
asked the Home Secretary whether he will inquire if the firm of Dreyfus and Company, 101, Leadenhall Street, E.G., were before the War Auerbach Brothers, partners of enemy parentage; and, if so, why the name of Auerbach as well as Dreyfus does not appear on their premises as prescribed by order?

The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Shortt): I am informed that the firm of Dreyfus and Company, Limited, was incorporated on the 2nd December, 1901, that it has been carrying on business under that name at 101, Leadenhall Street ever since, and that the directors are all British-born, subjects.

Oral Answers to Questions — RAILWAY EMPLOYES (CHARGE OF THEFT).

Mr. ALFRED SHORT: 30.
asked the Home Secretary whether he is aware that certain employés of the London and North Western Railway Company, Wednesbury, were recently arrested on a charge of theft; whether, before they had been proved guilty, they were paraded through the public streets handcuffed together; whether he will call for a report or instruct the local police superintendent to adopt another course in such cases in the future?

Mr. SHORTT: I have made inquiry with regard to this matter. The chief constable informs me that in ordinary circumstances the prisoners would have been conveyed by van, and it was only because the van could not be used on account of a failure of one of the horses that the prisoners had to be taken on foot. As there were seven men all charged with felony, the police considered it unsafe to take them unhandcuffed. The chief constable much regrets the incident, which was due to an unfortunate combination of circumstances not likely to recur.

Oral Answers to Questions — POLICE PENSIONS AND PAY.

Sir F. HALL: 31.
asked the Home secretary whether he is aware of the great distress existing amongst many pensioners of the police force who left the service on or before the 31st August, 1918; whether, considering that when pensions were granted to these men they were based upon the then purchasing value of money, he intends to take steps to bring such pensions up to the same rate as those given to officers leaving the service on and after 1st Septembr, 1918; and, if not, how can such inequality be justified?

Mr. SHORTT: I am sorry that I do not see my way to introduce legislation for this purpose. The case of police pensioners is similar to that of other persons dependent for their living on small pensions or other fixed incomes the amount of which does not increase, though their purchasing value has greatly decreased.

Sir F. HALL: Does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate the difference between the pensions—the great difference between the pension which will be received By the officer who retired previously to the 1st September, 1918, and the pension granted
to an officer retiring subsequently? Does he realise that the former pension is infinitely less than the latter, bearing in mind the purchasing power of a sovereign? Cannot something be done to alleviate the suffering and distress among these pensioners?

Mr. SHORTT: These police pensioners are in exactly the same position as pensioners from the whole of the Civil Service; it is a very large subject.

Sir F. HALL: Will these men be allowed eventually to go into the workhouse rather than that the Government should take stops to provide them with an adequate pension?

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: Will the right hon. Gentleman confer with his colleagues and see if something cannot be done for these pensioners?

Mr. SHORTT: The matter will receive very careful consideration.

Sir F. HALL: May we anticipate something more than consideration?

Mr. GILBERT: 32.
asked the Home Secretary whether the Report of the Committee on Police Pay and Pensions has now been presented to the Government; whether it is proposed to circulate the Report to Members; and, if so, when will it be published?

Mr. SHORTT: I have received the Committee's Report, and the Government are giving immediate consideration to the important recommendations it contains. I hope it will be published early next week.

Oral Answers to Questions — FOOD SUPPLIES.

PROFITEERING.

Mr. HIGHAM: 33.
asked the Home Secretary if, in view of the fact that fines are having little or no effect on profiteering by retail traders in all parts of the country, and in justice to those retailers who treat the public fairly, he will consider the advisability of introducing legislation which will make it a prisonable offence for retailers to overcharge the public or to sell food, particularly bread and meat, under weight?

Mr. SHORTT: The offences to which the hon. Member refers are already punishable by imprisonment without the
option of fine. The Ministry of Food informs me that thirty-one sentences were imposed last year, and six this year.

Mr. HIGHAM: Will the Prime Minister give a day for a Debate on this question?

Mr. RAPER: How many cases were investigated if thirty-one were punished by imprisonment?

Mr. SHORTT: I must ask for notice of that question.

Mr. HIGHAM: Can we have a day to debate the question?

Mr. J. JONES: In view of what is happening in Italy, do the Government contemplate like occurrences in this country? Will they do nothing to prevent them?

Lieut.-Colonel A. MURRAY: Seeing the Leader of the House is not here to answer the question of my hon. Friend, whether a. day will be given to Debate this question, is there no one to act as Leader in his absence?

Mr. SPEAKER: Notice should be given of the question.

Oral Answers to Questions — METROPOLITAN TRAMWAYS.

Mr. KILEY: 37.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been called to the state of the tram way lines in the Burdett Road, Mile End; whether he is aware that, owing to a dispute between the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney and the London County Council as to whether the system shall be reconstructed on the conduit or overhead system, the district has been without a tram way service for the past five years; and if he proposes to take any action thereon?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Bridge-man): My right hon. Friend has no power to intervene in this matter, but he is calling the attention of the councils concerned to the hon. Gentleman's question.

Oral Answers to Questions — RAILWAY ADMINISTRATION.

NOTTINGHAM (MIDLAND) STATION.

Mr. ATKEY: 38.
asked the president of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that the alteration in the arrangements of the Nottingham Midland Station with a view to restricting the use of the plat-
forms to ticket-holders necessitates the closing of the entrance to that station from Station Street; that this entrance was specially designed to meet the convenience of thousands of passengers per day; that its continued closure is a source of irritation and annoyance to the business community for which it especially caters; that a petition has been very largely signed for its reopening; and that war conditions alone justified the refusal of the railway company to reopen this entrance; and with he call the attention of the railway company concerned to this grievance?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I fear I cannot add to the reply given on the 1st July to a. question on this subject put by my hon. Friend.

Mr. ATKEY: When will the hon. Gentleman be able to give some reply to the question?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I cannot give any further reply, as the company do not see their way to reopen the question.

Mr. ATKEY: What other influence can be brought to bear?

The HON. MEMBER further: 39.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that the prevailing railway conditions are seriously prejudicing the businesses of the traders of Nottingham, and that on Friday, 27th June, the firm of Gerard Brothers had goods ready for dispatch to Thirsk, North Shields. Accrington, Clayton-le-Wood, Bournemouth, Gravesend, Cardiff, Chase Town, Newport (Mon.), Moseley, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Blackpool, White Cross Street, and Glasgow, but the railway companies would not accept the traffic; and will he see to it that this state of things is altered forthwith?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I will inquire into the specific complaint to which my hon. Friend refers. As regards the last part of the question, I would refer him to the answer which my right hon. Friend gave to a somewhat similar question which he asked yesterday.

Lieut.-Colonel Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCK: Is the hon. Member aware that the inability of the Midland Railway to handle the traffic is due to their unwillingness to engage an adequate staff?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I am not aware of that.

Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCK: Will you make inquiries?

ORGANISED BOY AND GIRL CAMPS.

Mr. BRIANT: 43.
asked the President of the Board of Trade if he is now in a position to state what facilities can be given for the conveyance by the railways of approved organisations of boys and girls to camps, especially as the delay is rendering the necessary arrangements increasingly difficult?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I hope to be able to let the hon. Member know before the end of this week what decision has been come to.

Mr. HURD: And will other hon. Members who have raised this question also be informed?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I will announce the decision arrived at.

Mr. BRIANT: Will the decision be communicated to the Boy Scouts and the Boys Brigades, so that they may know what facilities are to be granted?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I will do my best to tell everybody.

Mr. J. JONES: Will fathers of families living in poor districts who wish to send their children to the seaside have the same chance?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: That does not arise out of the question.

Oral Answers to Questions — OILFIELD, NORFOLK.

Sir J. D. REES: 40.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he can give the House any information regarding the discovery of oil in Norfolk?

The DEPUTY-MINISTER of MUNITIONS (Mr. Kellaway): I have been asked to answer this question. I have no information regarding the discovery in Norfolk of liquid petroleum. It has been known for a long time that the Kimmeridge Shales of Norfolk would yield considerable quantities of oil on distillation. The utility of this oil for commercial purposes depends, however, on the extent to which it might prove possible to eliminate the very high percentage of sulphur which it contains.

Sir A. FELL: Does the Government propose to do anything to develop these?

Mr. KELLAWAY: We are doing everything possible to develop every possible source of oil in this country.

Oral Answers to Questions — MR. GATTIE'S TRANSPORT SCHEME.

Mr. RAPER: 41.
asked the President of the Board of Trade who will be the representative of Labour on the Committee appointed to investigate Mr. A. W. Gattie's transport proposals; and whether, in view of the great national importance of Mr. Gattie's claims, he will consider inviting three outstanding leaders of commerce to join the Committee?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: A representative of Labour has been invited to serve on this Committee, but no reply has yet been received. The name will be announced as soon as possible. I do not think it would be desirable to add representatives of commerce to what is really an expert Committee on the technical practicability of the scheme.

Sir R. COOPER: Does the hon. Gentleman really think it is just and proper there should be two railway directors on this Committee and no representatives of industry and commerce, which are most concerned?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: As it is a question of practicability, I think it is natural railway representatives should be in the preponderance. The matter affects the railways, and if their representatives are satisfied it will be strong testimony.

Sir R. COOPER: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that it is directly opposed to the interests of the railway directors that this scheme should even be inquired into?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: No, Sir.

Mr. MacVEAGH: Is there any representation of Irish interests on this Committee?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I think not. I am not quite sure.

Mr. MacVEAGH: Is it not a matter which concerns Ireland, Scotland, and Wales as well as England?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Yes; but there are no representatives of Scotland on the Committee.

Sir F. HALL: Considering the supposed importance of this question, may we take it it is not going to fee prejudged toy the Board of Trade as was done apparently in a previous case?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The Board of Trade are not hostile to the scheme in any way. We only want to know whether it is practicable, and we are appointing practical men on the Committee for that purpose.

Sir F. HALL: Will the Committee consider Reports on this subject previously which emanated from the Board of Trade and which we had before the Select Committee on Transport?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: That is rather ancient history.

Sir F. HALL: It was only in October last.

Mr. MacVEAGH: Why are not Irish, Scottish and Welsh interests represented on this Committee?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: It would enlarge the Committee beyond reasonable proportions.

Mr. MacVEAGH: That is not an answer to my question.

Mr. RAPER: Is this not a question which specially affects the commerce of the country? Why should not commerce be represented on the Committee?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: It is a technical question and that is why we are appointing experts.

Mr. MacVEAGH: Are there no competent men in Scotland?

Mr. RAPER: 71.
asked the President of the Board of Trade when the Committee appointed to inquire into the claims of Mr. Gattie's goods transport scheme will commence their sittings; and whether or not the inquiry will be held with open doors?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: It is hoped that this Committee will be formally appointed and meet within a few days. As my right hon. Friend stated in reply to a question by the hon. Member on Monday, the suggestion as to holding public sittings will be referred to the Chairman.

Mr. RAPER: In view of the great national importance of the question, will the hon. Gentleman lay down in the terms of reference that the inquiry shall be held with open doors; and is the hon.
Gentleman aware of the fact that the people of this country cannot be satisfied with those closed inquiries?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: If the latter part of the question refers to this Committee, I must repudiate it. In reference to the question of holding the inquiry with open doors, the usual practice is to refer the matter to the Chairman.

Mr. SEDDON: Are we to accept it that the precedent of the last inquiry will be followed? Will any evidence which is put in be given to Members of this House, and not excised by the Chairman or anyone else?

Mr. MacVEAGH: Will the hon. Gentleman between now and the meeting of the Committee confer with the Leader of the House as to the reconstitute on of the Committee on a more representative basis?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I will confer with the Leader of the House on the matter.

Oral Answers to Questions — COAL SUPPLIES.

Mr. SPENCER: 42.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that a number of collieries in Nottinghamshire are making short time owing to lack of trucks; and whether he can suspend the operation of the Coal Order in that county with a view to the inhabitants purchasing greater supplies of coal now so as to relieve the pressure in winter time.

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: With regard to the first part of the question, I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which my right hon. Friend gave to a question asked by the hon. Member for the Mansfield Division yesterday. As regards the laying in of supplies of coal by householders in Nottinghamshire, the necessity for suspending the operation of the Household Fuel and Lighting Order, 1919, does not arise. Coal merchants in any area are permitted to make deliveries for stocking purposes to private consumers as soon as reserve stocks for the use of small consumers during the winter months have been established.

Mr. ADAMSON: (by Private Notice) asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will issue a White Paper, before the Debate on Monday, as to the basis of the calculation upon which the Government decided to increase the price of coal by 6s.?

The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of TRADE (Sir A. Geddes): Instructions have been given to have such a Paper prepared and circulated.

Oral Answers to Questions — ELECTRIC LIGHTING (CHARGES).

Mr. TREVELYAN THOMSON: 44.
asked the President of the Board of Trade what is the price charged for private electric lighting according to the latest available returns by the Cleveland and Durham Power Company; and what is the average price charged for private electric lighting by the various other companies in the United Kingdom who are authorised undertakers of electric light supply?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: The Electric Lighting Acts and Orders under which this company are supplying electricity only prescribe the maximum prices which may be charged.
I have no information as to the actual prices charged by the company or the average price charged by other companies supplying in the United Kingdom. These charges naturally vary a good deal, owing to differences in the local circumstances and conditions of supply.

Mr. THOMSON: Have not these companies to make statutory returns in the same way as municipalities?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I am not sure, but I will ask.

Oral Answers to Questions — AMBASSADOR TO UNITED STATES.

Lieut.-Colonel MURRAY: 47.
asked the Prime Minister whether he is now in a position to announce the appointment of a British Ambassador to the United States of America?

Mr. HARMSWORTH: I regret I can only refer my hon. and gallant Friend to the reply which I gave on 8th July to the hon. and gallant Member for Maidstone.

Sir B. FALLE: Is there no man in the State who is able to take this great post?

Oral Answers to Questions — WOOLLEN CLOTHING (HIGH PRICES).

Sir J. BUTCHER: 52.
asked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the
abnormally high prices of woollen clothes and garments, he will order a searching inquiry to be made into the cost incurred and the prices paid at every stage of the production and distribution of these articles, beginning with the raw materials and ending with the finished article as sold to the consumer, in order to ascertain what profits are made by the various persons through whose hands these articles pass on their way to the consumer?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I have been asked to reply. The Government have the high price of clothing under consideration, but I am not yet in a position to make a statement.

Sir J. BUTCHER: In view of the exceedingly high prices of clothing, food, and other commodities, will my hon. Friend consider the advisability of similar inquiries in regard to all these articles, in order to stop profiteering and bring down prices?

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: Are there any import restrictions on wool at present?

Sir J. BUTCHER: Will my hon. Friend be able to reply if I repeat the question next week?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I will represent to the Government what my hon. and learned Friend says.

Sir J. BUTCHER: May I ask the Leader of the House, to whom the question was addressed, how the high prices for all these commodities came about, and will he consider as early as possible the various suggestions I make with a view to bringing them down?

Mr. BONAR LAW (Leader of the House): That is a subject, I need not say, which has been engaging the attention of the Cabinet very closely. We will formulate our proposals, and hope to be able to announce them shortly.

Mr. HIGHAM: Will the right hon. Gentleman give a day for a Debate on the subject?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I have no objection to that, but I doubt very much whether it would help. It would probably be better, in any case, if we can formulate our proposals shortly, that we should have them before the House before there is a discussion. I do not wish to be taken as
saying we shall be able to make our proposals next week. It is a very difficult subject.

Oral Answers to Questions — FEDERAL DEVOLUTION.

Mr. MURRAY MACDONALD: 45.
asked the Prime Minister whether the Government proposes to give effect to the Resolution passd by this House on the 4th June and to appoint a Parliamentary body to consider and report upon a measure of Federal Devolution?

Mr. BONAR LAW: The answer is in the affirmative.

Oral Answers to Questions — OLD NAVAL PENSIONERS.

Major Sir B. FALLE: 46.
asked the Prime Minister if he can make any statement or suggestion regarding the old pensioners, Royal Navy, meaning all those pensioners over the age of fifty-five in 1914; and if he can hold out the hope that these men who have served their country will be considered in a pension scheme and pensioned on the new basic rate?

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: 101.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether the Government have now reconsidered their decision with regard to including the old pensioners, i.e., men over fifty-five, in the new scale of pensions; and, if so, what is the result of their reconsideration?

Mr. BONAR LAW: The Government have carefully considered this question and have decided that they would not be justified in adopting the suggestion of my hon. Friends. It would not be possible to make a distinction between the pensioners referred to in these questions and all other pensioners, and it must be remembered that all pensioners who have served in the War will receive the benefit of the new rates.

Sir B. FALLE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the intense disappointment which his answer will create in the great Service which beyond all others saved this country in the War?

Mr. BONAR LAW: This question has been most carefully considered by the Cabinet. We know there is hardship but it is not confined to the classes referred to, and though personally we should be as glad to do it as my hon. Friend himself, the Government has decided that it would not be justified.

Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: Will my right hon. Friend take into consideration that a great number of other pensioners, including Civil Service pensioners, desire to have similar concessions made; and is he-aware that the opinion of the House is three to one in favour of these pensioners receiving their allowance, and will he not reconsider the question in view of the fact that it would cost so very little money to the State?

Mr. BONAR LAW: That is a great mistake. It will cost a great deal of money. We really have taken into account all the factors in the case.

Sir F. HALL: If all the sailors who have served in the War are to have pensions on an increased basis will the police who also served during that time and retired previous to 1st September, 1918, have their pensions also calculated on the same basis?

Mr. BONAR LAW: That question just shows the reality of the answer I have given. I think it is quite justifiable that there should be a distinction between those who have risked their lives in the War and the others, and that is the only distinction.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRAFFIC CONGESTION (GOODS).

Mr. SAMUEL SAMUEL: 48.
asked the Prime Minister whether he will create co ordination on business lines between various Departments, so as to save money and relieve the congestion of goods at the docks and at other places; whether he is aware that hundreds of motor lorries are parading the country for the purposes of instruction to drivers; and could they, with co-ordination, be employed, whilst instructing the drivers, in relieving the congestion of goods in all directions?

Mr. BONAR LAW: Everything possible is being done by the Government to alleviate the congestion to which my hon. Friend refers, but I do not think that his suggestion is practicable.

Oral Answers to Questions — PEACE CELEBRATIONS.

GENERAL HOLIDAY.

Lieut.-Colonel MURRAY: 49.
asked the Prime Minister whether he will consider the advisability of declaring 19th July a general holiday for all Government employéys?

Mr. BONAR LAW: His Majesty's Government have already considered the matter, and decided to grant a general holiday to all Government employés on the 19th instant.

Mr. WATERSON: Will that apply to the troops, particularly in Russia?

FIGHTING FORCES.

Sir F. HALL: 50.
asked the Prime Minister what arrangements will be made to enable men serving in the Navy and Army and the Air Force to celebrate the official Peace Day, 19th July; and if he will consider as to the practicability of giving some preference as regards entrance on Peace Day to places of entertainment to men who have served, and are now serving, in the fighting forces of the Crown?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I understand that arrangements are being made whereby leave will be granted to all men of the fighting forces on as extensive a scale as possible. As regards the latter part of the question, His Majesty's Government have no powers in the matter.

FIREWORK DISPLAY, HYDE PARK.

Lieut. - Colonel SPENDER CLAY: 53.
asked the Prime Minister whether £20,000 is to be spent on a display of fireworks in Hyde Park during Peace celebrations on 19th July; and whether, in view of the need for national economy and the pressing demands for improved pensions and allowances in many branches of Government service, he will take steps to discourage such unproductive expenditure both by Government Departments and by local authorities?

Mr. BONAR LAW: The sum named by my hon. Friend is very greatly in excess of that actually sanctioned. In determining the amount of money to be devoted to decorations and festivities generally in London, I can assure the House that His Majesty's Government have had careful regard to the necessity of avoiding all extravagance and to confine the expenditure within strictly reasonable limits, while ensuring that the celebration in the centre of the Empire of, perhaps, the greatest event in history shall not be entirely unworthy of the occasion.

TRIUMPHAL MARCH OF TROOPS.

Colonel BURN: 58.
asked the Prime Minister if it is intended to make any
arrangement to enable Members of Parliament and their wives to view the triumphal march of the troops on 19th July?

Mr. BONAR LAW: A stand is being erected on the south side of the Mall for Members of Parliament and their wives. Hon. Members are entitled to two tickets, price 10s. each, and Members who desire tickets should give their names to Mr. Speaker's Secretary.

Mr. T. WILSON: Is this charge to be a precedent?

Mr. BONAR LAW: The Chancellor of the Exchequer will be able to tell the hon. Member if he thinks the price is lower than it ought to be.

Sir H. NORMAN: Is it wives or children?

Mr. BONAR LAW: Yes.

Commander VISCOUNT CURZON: Will the stands be behind the trees or not?

Mr. DEVLIN: Will it be half-price for children?

SEAT PRICES.

Sir HARRY BRITTAIN: 62.
asked the Prime Minister whether he proposes to take any measures against the profiteering of seats on the route of the Peace procession?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I very much regret that this is a matter in which it is not possible for the Government to intervene.

Mr. HOLMES: Will the Chancellor of the Exchequer have the names of the people who profiteer duly noted, so that excess profits can be collected in due course?

The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Chamberlain): If the hon. Member will be good enough to put his question on the Paper, I will give him an answer. I have not the Order Paper before me, and I do not know to what he is referring.

FRENCH FLAG.

Sir H. BRITTAIN: 63.
asked the Prime Minister whether, as a compliment to our French Allies and in celebration of our combined victory, he is prepared to advise His Majesty to instruct Government Departments to fly the flag of France on the 14th of July?

The FIRST COMMISSIONER Of WORKS (Sir Alfred Mond): His Majesty has already commanded that this should be done.

Oral Answers to Questions — IRISH POLICY.

Lieut.-Colonel AUBREY HERBERT: 56.
asked the Prime Minister when he proposes to make a statement with regard to the Government's future Irish policy?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I regret that it is not possible for me to name a date.

Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCK: When will the Prime Minister and his Liberal colleagues apply their own political principles to the government of Ireland?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I do not recognise any distinction as to their Liberalism between one set of colleagues and another.

Lieut-Colonel MURRAY: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether there will be a, statement before the Recess?

Mr. BONAR LAW: No, I cannot.

Oral Answers to Questions — COVENT GARDEN MARKET.

Mr. T. WILSON: 57.
asked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the possible ultimate purchase of Covent Garden Market by the State or the county council, he is aware that rents for the stands are now being raised by the operating company to the extent of at least 60 per cent.; and whether the fact will be recorded, since otherwise any such ultimate purchase price could be thereby increased to the extent of about £1,000,000 sterling?

Mr. BONAR LAW: This question is hypothetical, and I, therefore, cannot answer it.

Oral Answers to Questions — DE KEYSER'S HOTEL (PETITION OF APPEAL).

Major NEWMAN: 51.
asked the Prime Minister whether he can explain the Government's delay in bringing before the House of Lords its appeal in the case of the commandeering of De Keyser's Hotel soon after the outbreak of hostilities; pending a decision in this case are owners of houses or property commandeered being
paid compensation or rent as an act of grace and not of right; and what is the position of an owner who refuses to accept as equitable the compensation or rent offered him?

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir G. Hewart): My right hon. Friend has asked me to reply to this question. There has been no delay in the lodgment of the petition of appeal in this case, barely three months out of the six allowed for that purpose by the Standing Orders of the House of Lords having as yet expired since the delivering of the judgment of the Court of Appeal. In the meantime those owners of houses or of landed property who are willing to accept compensation paid as of grace are receiving it, and those who are not willing to do so remain in possession of such legal rights, if any, as they may be found to have when the House of Lords has decided which of the two conflicting decisions of the Court of Appeal on the question correctly represents the law.

Mr. STEWART: Is there any impartial body to which the owner of a commandeered house can appeal as against the Department which commandeers the house?

Sir G. HEWART: I do not quite know what is meant by appealing against the Department. If the question is one of compensation, as matters stand now the owner may go to the Defence of the Realm Losses Commission for compensation or he may take his chance of an action at law.

Oral Answers to Questions — GOVERNMENT OF INDIA (SELECT COMMITTEE).

Colonel YATE: 59.
asked the Prime Minister whether, considering that the records have been searched and no case has been discovered in which both the Minister and the Under-Secretary of the Department concerned have ever been appointed to sit upon a Select Committee and to vote on the decisions to be arrived at, he will reconsider the question of the advisability of creating a new precedent and of breaking with the old-established precedents of the House in the case of the Select Committee on the Government of India Bill, to which both the Secretary of State for India and the Under-Secretary have just been appointed?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I do not think it possible to alter the decision which the House has taken in this matter.

Colonel YATE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in the case of the Joint Select Committee on the Cippenham Depot Inquiry there was neither a Minister nor an Under-Secretary, and can he say why, if there was no necessity for a Minister on that Inquiry, there is a necessity for a Minister and an Under-Secretary on the Inquiry into the Government of India Bill? Does he not realise that these appointments tend to give rise to a feeling in India that the Government desire to vote down all the proposals and opinions that do not coincide with those of the Secretary of State?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I cannot believe that for a moment. If you look at the Committee, composed of those nominated by another place and by the House of Commons, I cannot imagine any body which is more certain to be representative of all views. I cannot see what objection there is to Ministers, who naturally ought to know something about the subject, being there to take part in the discussions, if they can find time.

Colonel YATE: Will the right hon. Gentleman decide that the Ministers on this Select Committee are not to vote?

Mr. BONAR LAW: That is treating Ministers even worse than my hon. Friend is supposed to treat them. Why should they not vote? The decisions and the votes will probably be published, and anyone who attaches any value to the Ministers' votes will see what they did and what the others did.

Lieut.-Colonel MURRAY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is a distinct difference of opinion on points of substance between the Secretary of State and several of the Provincial Governors? The Secretary of State only will be represented, and the Provincial Governors have no opportunity of being there and voting.

Mr. BONAR LAW: My hon. Friend is mistaken if he thinks that the views to which he is referring will not be adequately represented on the Committee.

Colonel YATE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Secretary of State said that he was the only constitutional representative of the Governors of India?
There is no representative of the Governors on the Committee, whereas the other side is fully represented.

Mr. BONAR LAW: Of course the Secretary of State is the only official representative of the Government of India, but that does not prevent the other views being expressed and put forward by those who uphold them who are not members of the Government.

Lieut.-Colonel MURRAY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that they cannot vote on the proceedings of the Committee?

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL COMMISSION ON AGRICULTURE.

Major O'NEILL: 60.
asked the Prime Minister why the terms of reference to the Royal Commission on Agriculture are confined to the conditions in Great Britain; and what steps the Government propose to take to consider and safeguard the future of the agricultural industry in Ireland?

Mr. BONAR LAW: The conditions of land tenure and employment of labour in Ireland are so different from those prevailing in Great Britain that the inclusion of Ireland in the reference to the Royal Commission would unnecessarily delay their findings without adding material information on the main issue of the inquiry—the relation between the prices of agricultural produce and the costs of labour.

Major O'NEILL: Is it not a fact that the Corn Production Act, which has given-rise to the necessity for this Commission, applied to England and Ireland equally; and is it not also a fact that in Ireland the dependence of the population upon-agriculture is far larger than in Great Britain? Is it not, therefore, far more vital to that country than here that a Commission should be set up to determine the future of the agricultural industry?

Mr. BONAR LAW: The answer I have-given is the only answer I can give for not doing what the hon. Member suggests. It would cause delay, and the delay would render the value of the Commission very much less.

Major O'NEILL: Are we to understand that no effort is to be made by the Government to protect the Irish farmers from
the danger which the agricultural community as a whole foresee is possible in the future?

Mr. BONAR LAW: The Commission will not protect the farmers from dangers. It will be the decision of Parliament that will do that.

Oral Answers to Questions — SECONDARY SCHOOLS (GRANTS).

Captain LOSEBY: 61.
asked the Prime Minister if he is aware that considerable dissatisfaction exists in educational circles throughout the country owing to the fact that Grants to secondary schools are being given upon what appear to be uneven conditions; and if he will consider the advisability of definitely enunciating the conditions upon which Grants are made?

The MINISTER of EDUCATION (Mr. Fisher): The Prime Minister has asked me to answer this question. I am not sure what the hon. Member means by "uneven conditions." If he refers to the conditions relating to free places, I have no evidence of such dissatisfaction as he suggests. The conditions on which Grants are given to secondary schools are clearly set forth in the Board's Regulations. I should deprecate any further detail in their definition as tending to deprive the Regulations of the elasticity which, in the interests of education, is desirable.

Captain LOSEBY: I beg to give notice that, in view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment on Tuesday next.

Oral Answers to Questions — IMPERIAL CONFERENCE.

Major O'NEILL: 64.
asked the Prime Minister whether any arrangement was arrived at with the Dominion statesmen who attended the Peace Conference as to the date of assembly of the special Imperial Conference which is to consider the future political inter-relationship of the Empire; whether any discussions on this matter took place between representatives of the Dominions and the Mother Country; and, if so, can he say with what measure of success they were attended?

Mr. BONAR LAW: Many informal discussions have taken place, and this exchange of views has been valuable, and,
though the desirability of holding the Conference at the earliest practicable date is recognised by all parties, it has not been possible to fix a date.

Mr. HURD: Has the right hon. Gentleman considered the proposal to hold this Conference in Ottawa?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I do not think that was suggested at any Conference at which I was present, but I will see.

Mr. HURD: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that it has been suggested by those in authority in the presence of Canadian Ministers?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I was not aware of it.

Oral Answers to Questions — STATE-AIDED SCHOOLS (REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNORS).

Captain COOTE: 65.
asked the Prime Minister whether he is aware of the discontent aroused in many State-aided schools by the abolition of the Regulation compelling a majority of the governors in such schools to be representative and by the dropping of the Clause against denominationalism; and whether, in the interests of democratic education, he will cause these matters to be reconsidered?

Mr. FISHER: The Prime Minister has asked me to answer this question. I have received no representations in this sense from any schools or any persons or bodies speaking on behalf of schools during the period for which the draft Regulations have been published. I am fully alive to the interests of democratic education, and I am prepared to defend the changes made in the Regulations as in the interest of national education in its widest sense.

Captain COOTE: Owing to the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I propose to raise this question on the Adjournment next Wednesday.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRUSTS (COMMITTEE'S RECOMMENDATIONS).

Mr. CLYNES: 66.
asked the Lord Privy Seal whether the Government have yet considered the recommendations of the Committee on Trusts; and what steps they
propose to take, by legislation or otherwise, to carry such recommendations into effect?

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: I have been asked to answer this question. The recommendations of the Committee are being carefully considered. and a statement on the subject will be made as soon as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions — WOMEN'S EMANCIPATION BILL.

Captain WEDGWOOD BENN: 67.
asked the Lord Privy Seal what course the Government propose to adopt in view of their defeat on the Women's Bill?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I have nothing to add to the answer which I gave to the hon. and gallant Member on Monday last.

Oral Answers to Questions — BRITISH RAILWAY COMPANIES (ROLLING STOCK ABROAD).

Sir A. SHIRLEY BENN: 68.
asked the Lord Privy Seal if he will state the basis on which remuneration is paid to the British railway companies for the service abroad of the 439 locomotives, 3,000 wagons, and thirteen other trains which have been returned; and by whom the depreciation on the rolling stock is assessed?

The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the WAR OFFICE (Mr. Forster): I have been asked to answer this question. Generally speaking, this rolling stock was supplied on loan by the railway companies. There is no special remuneration for its use apart from the general terms of the Government guarantee to the railway companies. On its return to this country, the stock is put into condition at the expense of Army funds, and the War Department have the right to consider the extent and cost of any work proposed for this purpose before it is undertaken, and, in case of dispute, to refer the matter to arbitration.

Sir A. SHIRLEY BENN: Will the right hon. Gentleman see that the losses made by the railroads during the current year show what proportion of the loss is due to lack of sufficient rolling stock created by the Government requisitions during the War?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I cannot answer that without notice, but I am afraid it is not possible to do what the hon. Member suggests.

Oral Answers to Questions — LICENSED PREMISES (TAXATION).

Captain R. TERRELL: 69.
asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the Inland Revenue is considering the possibility of taxing licensed premises according to their actual output, as in the case of clubs; and, if not, will he give instructions for the matter so as to be considered?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: The proposed method of taxation has been fully considered. I cannot recommend its adoption.

Oral Answers to Questions — DEMOBILISED SOLDIERS.

TUBERCULOSIS.

Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCK: 72.
asked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that the East Midland Joint Disablement Committee have 1,282 cases of demobilised soldiers suffering from tuberculosis in their area and whether, in order to provide concurrent training and treatment on the colony system for these men, they applied in October, 1918, to the Pensions Ministry and later to the Local Government Board for financial assistance, but can get no more satisfactory reply than that both Departments are discussing with each other the question of the treatment of tuberculous discharged men?

The MINISTER of HEALTH (Dr. Addison): I have no recent information as to the total number of demobilised soldiers suffering from tuberculosis in the particular area referred to in the question, but I may say that the number of such cases in residential institutions on the 1st July was 183, and the number on the waiting list was twenty-four. The proposal to provide a colony for the concurrent training and treatment of tuberculous men in this area was first brought to the notice of my Department at the end of May, when that particular subject of colony treatment had already been specially referred to the Departmental Committee set up by the Minister of Pensions and myself. Their Report will, it is hoped, be issued very shortly; and I will then see that suitable steps are taken as soon as possible.

Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCK: Will adequate and immediate steps be taken to carry out the recommendations of the Committee?

Dr. ADDISON: I must see what the recommendations are first.

HOUSING.

Major PRESCOTT: 73.
asked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that numbers of demobilised soldiers in almost every town are unable to get suitable living accommodation, which is causing public concern; whether, in view of the waste of time involved in relying upon local authorities to meet the national need for a quick supply of houses, he will consider the expediency of establishing an emergency organisation with a view to making good the shortage of houses in the same way in which the Government got shells, explosives, and other munitions of war?

Dr. ADDISON: In the circumstances referred to in. the question, when the local authority is not able to deal with the matter with sufficient rapidity it will be possible to take such action as is suggested by my hon. Friend if the Housing Bill passes into law in its present form.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: In order to assist the local authorities, will the hon. Gentleman consider the question of earmarking the Army huts, particularly for housing demobilised and Service men?

Dr. ADDISON: We have already gone into this question in great detail.

Oral Answers to Questions — BRICKLAYERS (RATE OF WORK).

Sir F. HALL: 74.
asked the Minister of Health if he can state the average number of bricks laid by a bricklayer in this country prior to the War and at the present time in Great Britain and the United States, respectively; if he is aware that certain of the principal trade unions in the building trade have placed a limitation on the output of their members; if this policy is partly responsible for causing the delay in carrying out the national housing policy that is so urgently called for and increasing the cost of providing houses to an extent which makes it difficult for the local authorities concerned to provide adequate housing accommodation; and if he will state what action the Government are taking to secure the measure of production by the workpeople concerned if the housing problem is to be solved with due expedition and reasonable economy?

The MINISTER of LABOUR (Sir R Horne): I have been asked to reply to this question. Exact information as to
the average number of bricks laid by a bricklayer prior to the War and at the present time in this country and the United States is not available, but I shall try to get it and thereafter communicate with the hon. and gallant Gentleman. I have no reliable information that any of the trade unions in the building trade have placed a limitation on the output of their members. It is obvious, however, that if the housing schemes are to be carried out with the necessary rapidity and without imposing undue cost upon the nation, any limitation of output must be avoided. The question of an adequate supply of labour for housing schemes is being dealt with, and is at present being considered by the Building Resettlement Committee, which is a Sub-committee of the Industrial Council for the Building Trade.

Sir F. HALL: If I put down a question for this day week, does the right hon. Gentleman think he will be able to answer it?

Sir R. HORNE: I think that I could probably answer it with regard to the English building trade, but the comparison with the United States is more difficult, because, obviously, a great many factors enter into the calculation which we do not understand.

Sir F. HALL: I will put down a question, for this day fortnight.

Sir R. HORNE: I will do my best.

Mr. CLYNES: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that all the principal trade-unions repudiate ever having passed any resolution or come to any arrangement or made any rule imposing any limitation on the work of their members?

Sir R. HORNE: I have said so. I am not aware that any trade union has passed any such resolution as is indicated.

Sir F. HALL: If the right hon. Gentleman finds a tremendous difference in the number of bricks laid now per day as compared with the pre-war period, will he inquire into the reasons of that difference?

Mr. J. JONES: Will the right hon. Gentleman inquire what bricklayer is so lazy as this House is in carrying out its promises?

Oral Answers to Questions — RAILWAY VEHICLE WORKERS' UNION.

Mr. MARRIOTT: (by Private Notice) asked the Minister of Labour whether it is the case that the Railway Vehicle Workers' Union, while admitting that they have no members unemployed, have refused to allow a certain firm to employ discharged sailors and soldiers, on the ground that they are not members of the union, and that the said union nevertheless refuses to admit them into the union, and what action he proposes to take on the matter?

Sir R. HORNE: I presume that the hon. Member refers to a dispute which has arisen at Messrs. Charles Roberts' works, Norbury. I am in communication with the Amalgamated Society of Vehicle Builders on the subject. I am not aware that the grounds of their action are those stated in the question.

Mr. MARRIOTT: Is it the case that men belonging to this union are at present out on strike, and the building and repairing of wagons which are very urgently needed are being delayed thereby?

Sir R. HORNE: That is an entirely different question from that which was asked. I should prefer that the hon. Gentleman would give me notice of that.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.

Sir D. MACLEAN: May I ask the Leader of the House what business he proposes to take next week? Further, in the event of the Debate on the Ministry of Ways and Communications Bill being concluded before 10 o'clock to-night, what other business does he propose to take?

Mr. BONAR LAW: The business which we propose to take next week is-—

Monday—Supply (Board of Trade Vote), in order to enable a discussion to take place as to the price of coal.

Tuesday and Wednesday—Finance Bill.
Thursday—Supply (Post Office Vote).

As regards the last part of the question, that must depend on the Finance Bill, and perhaps my right hon. Friend (Mr. Chamberlain) will answer.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I have been making some inquiries as to what will suit the convenience of the House. We have finished the portion of the Finance Bill dealing with Customs and Excise. The next portion is that dealing with the Income Tax, on which very important questions immediately arise. I gather that it would be for the convenience of those interested in that question that we should not enter upon that as a second Order to-day, possibly at a late hour of the evening; and if the House will be content to come to an agreement that we finish the Committee stage, of the Bill in the two days next week, without sitting unduly late—we need not close immediately at 11 o'clock—I shall be very glad to meet the wishes of right hon. Gentlemen by postponing the further consideration of the matter until Tuesday. But if there be any doubt about our finishing in reasonable time on Wednesday, then I must take advantage of the opportunity afforded this evening.

Sir F. HALL: May I ask the Leader of the House if the Government have yet considered increasing the time in which questions can be put? [HON. MEMBERS: "Order!"]

Sir D. MACLEAN: In answer to the question which my right hon. Friend has put to me may I say we have had two days of I do not think useless discussion? I think there was no obstruction. There are two important questions certainly which have yet to come before the Committee and in one of which the Labour party are particularly concerned, and another as to which many people take a great deal of interest. My right hon. Friend will know that we cannot give any pledge at all because we cannot govern what the Committee will wish to do. There is a question like the double Income Tax, for instance. As far as we are concerned what we say is this, and my right hon. Friend the Member for West Fife (Mr. Adamson) agrees with me, we do our very utmost to see that the decisions in which we are concerned are not at all unduly prolonged, and we do not see any reason why the Debate on the Committee stage should not be concluded on Wednesday night.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: Nobody can bind other persons in entering into a bargain of this kind, but this kind of understand-
ing made in the presence of the whole House has never been broken I think by any party, and as it meets the wishes of the House I think it will be observed, and therefore I will not ask the House to proceed with the Finance Bill to-day, and we will resume the discussion on Tuesday.

Sir F. HALL: May I ask the Leader of the House if his attention has been drawn to the fact that there are seventy-one questions that have not been answered to-day—[HON. MEMBERS: "Supplementaries!"]—and whether; considering that this is the only chance that Members have of bringing matters before the Government, he can see his way to extend the time, so that questions can be answered up to four o'clock? [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] From inquiries I have made, I venture to think that such a change would meet with the general approval of Members of the House.

Mr. BONAR LAW: I think it is very doubtful if it would. I believe we have got through a larger proportion of questions this Session than at any previous time, and we would have got through a great many more if a very limited number of Members did not deem it necessary to put so many supplementary questions.

Sir F. HALL: Does the right hon. Gentleman not recognise the fact that supplementary questions very often bring out the reply that is necessary for the House and the country to have?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I was not complaining of supplementary questions. They are useful to Ministers as well as to the House.

Mr. MacVEAGH: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in the case of Irish questions it takes four supplementary questions to get one answer?

Mr. BONAR LAW: I had not specially noticed.

Mr. MacVEAGH: You will find that is correct.

Mr. BONAR LAW: That is a very serious reflection on those who put the Irish questions.

Ordered,
That the Proceedings on Government Business be exempted at this day's Sitting from the provisions of the Standing Order (Sittings of the House)."—[Mr. Bonar Law.]

SELECTION (STANDING COMMITTEES).

STANDING COMMITTEE A.

Sir SAMUEL ROBERTS reported from the Committee of Selection; That they had added the following Member to Standing Committee A (for the consideration of the Aliens Restriction Bill): Major Baird.

Report to lie upon the Table.

STANDING COMMITTEE C (SUPPLY).

Mr. TUKTON reported from Standing Committee C that they had agreed to the following Resolutions:

CIVIL SERVICES ESTIMATES, 1919–20.— Unclassified Services.

"1. That a sum, not exceeding £30,000,000, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, to meet Expenditure arising from the Government Control of Railways in Great Britain and Ireland under the Regulation of the Forces Act, 1871.

Class III.

2. That a sum, not exceeding £1,183,337, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for the Salaries of the Commissioner and Assistant - Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police, and of the Receiver for the Metropolitan Police District, the Contribution towards the Expenses of the Metropolitan Police, the Salaries and Expenses of the Inspectors of Constabulary, and other Grants in respect of Police Expenditure.

3. That a sum, not exceeding £473,000, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March. 1920, for the Expenses of the Prisons in England, Wales. and the Colonies, including a Grant-in-Aid of certain Expenses connected with Discharged Prisoners.

4. That a sum, not exceeding £285,332, be granted to His Majesty to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Inspector of Reformatories, and for the Expense of the Maintenance of Juvenile Offenders in Reformatory, Industrial, and Day Industrial Schools, and in Places of Detention under the Children Act, in Great Britain.

5. That a sum, not exceeding £46,875, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920, for the Expense of the Maintenance of Criminal Lunatics in the Criminal Lunatic Asylums at Broadmoor and Rampton."

Resolutions to be reported To-morrow.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

Gas and Water Provisional Orders Bill, Reported, with Amendments [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.

Bill, as amended, to be considered To-morrow.

Pier and Harbour Provisional Orders Bill, Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.

Bill to be read the third time To-morrow.

Electric Lighting Provisional Order Bill, Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Order confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.

Bill to be read the third time To-morrow.

Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 2) Bill,

Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.

Bill to be read the third time To-morrow.

Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 3) Bill,

Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.

Bill to be read the third time To-morrow.

Local Government Provisional Order (No. 5) Bill,

Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Order confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.

Bill to be read the third time To-morrow.

Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 7) Rill,

Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.

Bill to be read the third time To-morrow.

Commons Regulation (Coity Wallia) Provisional Order Bill,

Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Order confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.

Bill to be read the third time To-morrow.

Gosport and Alverstoke Urban District Council Bill,

Leicester Corporation Bill,

Rotherham Corporation Bill,

Falmouth Docks Bill [Lords'],

Manchester Corporation Bill,

Reported, with Amendments; Reports to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

PRIVATE BILLS GROUP A).

Leave given to the Committee on Group A of Private Bills to make a Special Report (so far as relates to the Manchester Corporation Bill).

Special Report brought up, and read; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.

That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to dissolve the marriage of George Roland Alexander Pallin with Clara Eileen Pallin, his now wife, and to enable him to marry again; and for other purposes. [Pallin's Divorce Bill [Lords.]

PALLIN'S DIVORCE BILL [Lords].

Read the first time; to be read a second time.

Orders of the Day — MINISTRY OF WAYS AND COMMUNICATIONS BILL

Order for Third Reading read.

The MINISTER (Designate) of WAYS and COMMUNICATIONS (Sir Eric Geddes): I beg to move,
That the Bill be now read the third time.
In view of the long Debates, both in Committee and in this House, and the general interest in this Bill which sets up the Ministry, I think it would meet the wishes of the House if I would make a general statement, very briefly, as to what the Bill now does, and, generally, what it is proposed in the initial stages to do under the Bill, if it becomes law, and the organisation that it is proposed to set up. The Bill divides itself readily into two aspects, the permanent aspect and the temporary aspect. The principal provisions of a permanent character are, first, the setting up of a Ministry specially charged with the transportation of the country, to which are permanently transferred the powers which existing Government Departments and public Departments have in connection with transportation. Then, permanent power is given to operate and maintain certain new services which can be set up during a two-years' temporary period under the Act. Power is given to deal with privately-owned wagons, and there arc also powers to make advances. Turning to the temporary powers for two years, those include a wide scope in connection with transportation undertakings as a whole, and adequate arrangements are embodied in the Bill for compensation to those who under the provisions of the Bill, in the national interest, may in their individual or corporate capacity be subjected to loss. It is provided particularly for docks that if the Minister of Ways and Communications gives an instruction to a dock authority, a statutory dock authority, to carry out any particular modification in their working, or to undertake works which the dock authority can show would be seriously injurious to the prosperity of their undertaking, then they may have an arbitration on the order. There is also temporary power to establish new services and power to call during the two years for accounts and returns. Those, I
think, are the principal powers conferred by the Bill of a permanent and temporary character.
As to the financial provisions, in addition to the ordinary Estimates which will be laid by the Department in the ordinary way, there are special additional safeguards. Any new service can only be undertaken if a complete estimate for the service has been approved by the Treasury, and if it involves a total expenditure estimated to exceed £500,000, with the additional approval of both Houses, and no larger sum than £1,000,000 for any one work shall be advanced, even if already voted in the Estimates, unless by special Resolution of both Houses. Further land cannot be compulsorily acquired, nor roads broken up for new services, unless approved by both Houses. There are ample and, I hope, satisfactory safeguards for the employés of the undertakings of which possession can be taken under the terms of the measure. In order to ensure that the Minister shall in the exercise of those powers be given the host advice, and in certain specific instances to ensure that he is to receive that advice, various Advisory Committees have been set up, specifically one to advise on the question of rates and one to advise on the question of roads, and, generally, a panel of experts of men of wide business experience from which the Minister will appoint Committees to advise him on matters on which he desires advice. In the case of the provision of the revision of rates, using that word in its widest sense, and in taking possession of undertakings, or in starting new services, the Minister is obliged to seek advice from those Advisory Committees, and in other cases it is optional. But in all those instances the final decision rests with the Minister and the Government of the day. That, I venture to think, must remain so, as it is in accordance with the constitutional procedure of the country.
4.0 P.M.
During the Debates, both in this House and in Grand Committee, Amendments have been introduced giving power to Advisory Committees to veto action which the Minister wishes to take-— to exercise authority over the Minister, to make independent reports to the public, to make public their advice to the Minister. None of these Amendments were maintained, and if it is not taking up the time of the House I would like to offer a few observations on that point, because it is quite possible that
when the Bill goes into Debate in another place this matter may again arise, and it has a very great significance on our machinery of government. If we surround any Minister with bodies of outsiders who have the power either to veto his action or to voice official opinions upon the work of the Department as outsiders of the Department and yet within the confidence of the Department, it is bound to take responsibility from the Minister, which I think the House, in coming to the decision it did, and the Grand Committee also, does wish to place on the Minister. The House wishes to retain the full responsibility of the Minister, and I think at this stage it is very important that we should clear our minds on this point, because, with the development of Government and Government control and Government interest in such matters as these, this question of Advisory Committees with or without power over a Minister is bound to arise again, and may arise again on this Bill. In my opinion, which I give with great deference, there is no halfway house to a Minister and a Member of a Government responsible solely and absolutely to Parliament. If you create a body which has responsibility for vetoing and controlling a Minister, then you cannot hold the Minister responsible, because he is partially controlled by someone else. You must either have corporate responsibility or individual responsibility, and there is no half-way house at all which could be used satisfactorily either in the administration of commercial undertakings or the administration of great Government Departments.
I do not think there is any precedent in the Government of this country in its great Departments where the undivided responsibility of a Minister has been either challenged or interfered with. There were individual cases where a Commission was set up with actual executive authority, and where the direct responsibility to Parliament did not exist for their executive actions. One instance was the Road Board; another was the Development Commission. I would be the last to suggest that these two bodies, within their limited scope, did anything but good work, their responsibility to Parliament was through the Treasury on financial matters; but there was no Minister who was responsible for developing any policy in those two sets of national activities. The Committee which sat towards the end of the War, presided
over by Lord Haldane, after very careful investigation definitely advised against semi-independent bodies of that kind, and strongly reported in favour of every Department of State being responsible directly and solely, through its Minister, to Parliament. In the opinion of the Government that was a wise decision, and they adopted it.
If Committees such as have been suggested, and such as no doubt will be suggested in another place, wore set up under this Bill which had the power of controlling the Minister and vetoing his action, there is no Minister to whom Parliament can look for the development of a transport policy. If we consider, human nature being what it is, how such Committees would work, I think the House would see that they are really not a practical or practicable solution of the difficulty which confronts the House, and which we all know and recognise. The Minister and the Government are responsible for developing a policy. They seek advice from an Advisory Committee. The Advisory Committee has the power either to veto something the Minister wishes to do or of giving advice. But the Minister must be responsible for the development of any policy which the Government is carrying out. The Committee has no responsibility for that policy; they are only responsible for giving advice, and they can only be shot at indirectly if something done on their advice goes wrong. As long as that is so they will play for safety. I do not say we should not go for safety, but sometimes you have to decide between one course and another; the one may be the safer, the other the less safe course, but you get ahead on it. Therefore, the putting up of the these Committees must inevitably hamper the activities of the Department and vitiate the direct responsibility to the House. The possibility of setting up commissioners for this great transportation problem of the country is not one which I should wish definitely to pronounce against. It may be that after the two years' consideration for which this Bill provides, the House will come to the conclusion that some sort of corporation is the best way to manage or direct and control the transportation of the country, but if such a corporation is set up I suggest that it involves an important change in our constitutional procedure. We have got over the difficulty which comes with such an organisation in the case of the. Electricity Supply Bill by
giving local commissioners complete power for their undertaking, subject to general control from Whitehall, and that relieves the Minister from developing an active policy, and makes him, through the Chief Commissioner of Electricity, what the Board of Trade has hitherto been, largely a regulating and advisory Department, the responsibility for running the undertaking being with the district commissioners. That may be suitable for electricity, and I think it is. It was recommended after long deliberation by the Committee presided over by the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Sir A. Williamson), and that is now in Grand Committee. Some such arrangement may be suitable for our transport undertakings, but whether that is a suitable organisation or not it is not open to us to start it to-day. We have adopted the principle of a Minister responsible to Parliament, and the House has affirmed that, while at the same time giving Advisory Committees which cannot limit or hamper the activities of the Minister.
In my Second Reading speech I referred to the financial result of the working of the railways. That speech apparently has caused misunderstanding, and I have apparently in some respects mislead certain Members of the House. I regret that very much, and I am sure the House will acquit me of any desire to mislead. I rather wish that a Minister who has not-had longer experience of the House than I, could be allowed to safeguard his speeches by the well-known commercial expression "E. and. O.E." ["errors and omissions excepted"], but I fear that the OFFICIAL REPORT would not admit of that safeguard. I think that if the House will endeavour to follow me for a few minutes it will be clear that the words I used were not strictly inaccurate. I may not have been as meticulously precise as I should have been, but the words, I think, were not inaccurate. The words I used were "a loss," "increased cost" "a deficit," and "something which the taxpayer paid." These were the words I used in referring to the £90,000,000 and £100,000,000, but I would like now to put as clearly as I can the position, because it is really perfectly simple. In the earliest months of this year the estimated increased cost of operating the railways above 1913 costs, was at the rate of £90,000,000 to £100,000,000 a year. Assum-
ing that the same traffic would pass in 1919 as passed in 1913, this sum would fall on the taxpayer, and in that sense it was a loss to the taxpayer.

Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: Does my right hon. Friend assume the same traffic and at the same rates?

Sir E. GEDDES: Yes. In that sense it was a loss to the taxpayer. That was the only estimate which it was possible to get at the time from the responsible Departments. The estimated excess cost of operating—which, the House will remember, was from £90,000,000 10,1100,000,000—has since been increased by the Department responsible to from £104,000,000 to £109,000,000. It has gone up from between the two margins—£90,000,000 and £100,000,000—to between £104,000,000 and £109,000,000. That was in the light of experience and further consideration of the concession made to employés, and it is at that figure that the Estimate stands to-day. Further consideration and investigation during the past six months has revealed possibilities of economies and other credit factors which give the estimated net deficit. The original figure was an increased working cost, and on the estimate of similarity of traffic for 1913, and gave a loss to the taxpayer. The net deficit payable by the taxpayer for the current financial year is estimated to be £60,000,000, which was included in the Budget figures. That is the explanation of the figures which I quoted, but the House will realise that at this time such a figure must be very uncertain. If we take, for instance, the increased cost of coal which has been forecasted—and which will be debated in the House, I understand, next week—that alone is £5,000,000 on the railway bill at once. There are other factors, both of income and expenditure, which practically make it impossible to tell to-day what the position is going to be for the full current financial year.
If, as I hope, I have cleared up the misunderstanding which my original statement made, I would like briefly to tell the House what the Government proposes to do in the initial stages under the powers-given by this Bill if it becomes law. I also propose to touch upon the proposed appointments in the superior personnel. As I have shown, our railways-to-day are working at a great loss. It does not matter whether it is £60,000,000 or more; the figure is so colossal that we have to look at it as a very serious
problem. That £60,000,000 is what the Government has to make good, including, of course, the guarantee of the net receipts of 1913 to the railway shareholders. Those net receipts, which were somewhere between £45,000,000 and £50,000,000—I am speaking from memory-will account for roughly £50,000,000 of the £60,000,000. They provide 4¼ per cent. upon the capital on the 1913 basis. As interest goes to-day that is not an unduly large return on capital. No one would wish it to be smaller if the industry is to remain in a healthy condition, and is to be able to develop to meet the requirements of the country. I endeavoured to find out by cable what the position was in America. I do not know whether the American figures compare with my previous figure of £90,000,000 or the present £60,000,000, but the deficit that the taxpayer is expecting to have to pay today on their railways is at the rate of £150,000,000 a year. That is after the Americans have put 25 per cent. on the whole of their freight rates. That is a comparison which may be interesting to the House in considering this matter. That £60,000,000, including as it does a modest return on the Capital, the country has somehow or other to make up, no matter whether it comes from the taxpayer or the payer of freight dues. How can we do it? In what direction can we look to improve matters?
I am not giving the points in their order of importance, but in the first place there is the elimination of competitive services in the widest sense—services simply given for purposes of competition. The next point is the common user of all railway rolling stock that is fit for common user. Just as there are special wagons for special trades which will have to be protected, so there are special railway-owned wagons for special districts it is the common user of all rolling stock which car. be made available for common use, and is of a design suitable for common user. The corollary to that is the elimination of the private wagon, and obtaining the common user of that, in so far as it is available and suitable. Then there is the increased capacity of lines to get more traffic over them, and the decrease of the cost of traction by judicious electrification—not wholesale electrification, as has been suggested would be carried out, but judicious electrification. There is great economy,
and there is enormous advantage, as has been proved by actual practice, in heavy electric traction in increasing the capacity of the line. Then I am sure the House will appreciate that, once you have got the whole of the wagons under one control, so that you are sure that all the rolling stock will be gradually and progressively brought up to the best standard, then you can afford to improve the loading gauge. That is a very costly and difficult thing to do throughout the country. It can only be justified it the whole of the rolling stock is going to conform to the new loading gauge eventually. As long as railways could only speak for half the rolling stock—which is what they own to-day, namely, 700,000 out of 1,400,000 wagons—it was difficult to justify the wholesale improvement of the loading gauge, which is probably worse in this country than in any other big country in the world. Once we get the whole of the rolling stock under the one control, so that it can go forward on the one line of improvement, it is worth while improving the loading gauge, and that will mean great economy in the working of traffic.

An HON. MEMBER: Would the right hon. Gentleman tell us the exact meaning of "loading gauge"? It is a technical term.

Sir E. GEDDES: It is the height and width of the vehicle which can pass obstructions on the line. It means altering station platforms, altering the entrances to warehouses, altering what is called the "six-foot" between the tracks, altering passing points on shortened sidings. [HON. MEMBERS: "And bridges and tunnels."] And bridges and tunnels. A great many of those are all right, but there are a limited number which will have to be altered.
Improvement of the loading gauge, and increased size and capacity of wagons, can only be attained when you are bringing the appliances of the country gradually into line with the development in the size of the wagons. When this House was considering the Bill on the Report stage, I gave some figures which showed the very great advantage in the paying load of the trains resulting from the use of bigger wagons. In addition you would have enormous economy in the length of your sidings, which are now taxed. They are now, in many cases, the limiting factor as regards the size of the train you can use. Last,
but by no means least, comes the question of reducing the detention of rolling stock, and that is one of the worst difficulties. The proportion of time that the wagon is actually travelling is very small. By standardisation of locomotives and rolling stock we get great reductions in the cost of manufacturing, maintenance, and repairs.
All these measures can be taken, and, if the Bill becomes law, will be taken progressively. There is, indeed, so far as I know, no difference of opinion between those responsible for the railways and those responsible for endeavouring to get these reforms carried out. All these matters can be taken in hand during the next two years, but they will take time to reach fruition—much longer than two years. It is a very extensive undertaking, and during those two years, if we are to proceed on the principle that, I believe, in spite of its disadvantages, appeals to the House, that it is the surest way to national bankruptcy to go on subsidising services, and that each service must, broadly speaking, stand on its own feet, I think it is inevitable that for a time, at any rate. freight rates will go up. To-day it is not-only the money that is most important; it is the actual capacity of the line and the possibility of moving the traffic about the country. That is of vital importance. To give one example to the House, there is the coastal traffic. Many hon. Members are familiar with the position of the coastal traffic of this country. It was, roughly speaking, I think, about 70,000,000 tons a year. To-day, on account of the subsidy to railways—because that £60,000,000 is a subsidy—the coastal traffic is practically dead, and the 70,000,000 tons, or such part of it as under present disturbed industrial conditions it is desired to move, and there are large quantities, cannot be carried coastwise, because consignors cannot afford to pay the rates which the coastal steamers demand, when they can send it at lower subsidised railway rates. A very large proportion of the 70,000,000 tons of coastal traffic is to-day waiting to get away on the railways at the lower rate, and all coastal business is dead. That is a bad thing. It is stopping the development of trade, and it is killing a very valuable and important business. After all, our coastal traffic corresponds to the water-borne traffic on the great waterways of Europe. We have not those waterways, but we have the sea around our coasts,
and that is really the comparison. That traffic is dead to-day because the railways are subsidised. That is one instance, but the result of the subsidy on the physical condition of our railways docs not stop there. As hon. Members know, the cartage rate is bound up in the railway rates. The cartage and delivery rates have not been put up, because the full rate is subsidised. The consequence is that, just as the coastal carrier cannot live against the subsidised railway traffic, so the private carter cannot live against the subsidised railway cartage. The consequence is that, with the difficulty of horses, the difficulty of getting fodder, the difficulties in regard to men and their wages, the disturbed conditions generally prevailing, and no money, the private carter is lethargic, and the whole of the cartage is being thrown on the railway cartage staff, which cannot handle the business—they have not the means. The consequence is that the delay of the rolling stock is perfectly colossal and abnormal, and, as I will show later, we cannot afford to have abnormal delays. These matters all necessitate the passing of some legislation. There is no power to deal with railway rates to-day. It cannot be done under the Defence of the Realm Act. We must have legislation of some kind, either this Bill or some other Bill, and the matter has got to be dealt with. The delay to rolling stock is caused by the present cartage situation. It is a well-known factor in railway management that, when trade is boosting and everything is going fast and there seems to be great industrial activity, that is the time when delay to rolling stock arises out of all proportion to any other factor. The greater the activity the greater the delay to rolling stock. The reason is that the trader does not provide for the peak of his traffic in the lay-out of his premises. He provides for the steady normal traffic, and something else has to take the peak. There are five years of arrears of work to overtake. His handling costs are high; the hours of his labour have been upset and shortened, and that has altered the shifts, and he has great difficulties of his own. The cost of building is higher. The consequence is abnormal delay to rolling stock, and that again is one of the factors in the situation. Then the agricultural workers hours are upset and the railway workers' hours, and that is all making for delay to rolling stock. It cannot be avoided, and we have to face it. On the
top of all that—I heard hon. Members asking questions about it to-day—we have this to consider in the railway wagon situation. In this country to-day the railway-owned wagons—the. House will remember that there are 700,000 of them—are 75,000 short of what they should be on the normal progressive development of wagons. That is due to the War. Wagons went overseas, and there are great arrears in maintenance, far more wagons than usual awaiting repairs, and there are arrears of replacements and arrears of new construction. As nearly as I can estimate, there is a shortage of 75,000. How can we make good that deficiency? It is said, "Bring wagons back from. France." Certainly. Normal repairs and normal building are going on, but prices are very high. The railway shareholders—and I would like the House to take this point, because it is going to come up again and again in the Debates we shall have under these provisions and Resolutions of the House under the Bill when it becomes law— the railway shareholder gains nothing by the delivery of plant at the end of this year as compared with the end of next year. If a locomotive is delivered this year, and we pay a higher price for it, we get the advantage at once, but the railway shareholder gets no advantage. He has got no interest either in paying the high price or in paying a price for quick delivery. That is one of the problems. It is a difficult situation. Somehow or other we have got to get building going on an abnormal basis. We have to build not only wagons, but locomotives. There were locomotives used by the Army in France. We have to get them taken over and to get them running. You cannot blame the railway directors for being reluctant to pay very high prices, when by waiting they can get a lower price.
Let me turn now to docks. What is proposed there is, first of all, to invite the railways and the docks to get together and to co-operate, to eliminate unnecessary shunting, to reduce delays to rolling stock—they are very, very bad—to encourage the use of larger wagons where that is desirable—a great deal of the difficulty in raising the wagon standard of the country is due to the fact that the wagons cannot be used at the docks when they get there—to get increased facilities for quick handling of big wagons, to eliminate heavy cartage and the conse-
quent double handling, to set up machinery for co-operation between the systems of working, and to organise a steady supply of wagons so that we shall not have masses of rolling stock at the docks. That can be arranged. It has not been done so far throughout the country.
As to roads, I am one of those who believe—and I am speaking after a good deal of thought on the subject—that the future of this country, in relation to agriculture and housing and to a certain extent in relation to industry, depends upon good roads. The life of our cities, ingress and egress from our cities, can be enormously improved by good roads. In other countries light railways and tramways have been developed. They are most useful and most successfully operated. But the conditions there are fundamentally different. In the first place, in most of those countries the land is flat. Here it is up and down all the time. Then I know-no other country with the number of hedges that we have. The whole country is cut up with hedges. They may be a thing of beauty and may be excellent for the local hunt, but they are very bad for transportation. You get a severance; you have to fence your lines; you have to put in hedges, which in turn have to be looked after, and all these difficulties are added to the up-and-down nature of the country. The country is not as suitable for light railways on a wholesale scale as are many other countries. I do not say that there are not successful light railways in this country, and I hope there will be many more, but on the whole you cannot say that because they work so well in Belgium and France you can put them down here on the same lines. Although I still think that for a dense and regular traffic, especially when it is long-distance traffic and has not scattered collection and delivery, we can do better with proper light railways or with the railways themselves: yet for seasonal traffic of no great density there is nothing like the roads. In this connection I hope we shall be able to make very big developments indeed. As the House knows, we are fortunate enough in having probably the finest roadmaker in the world at our disposal, if this becomes law. As a layman, as an interested layman, while this Bill has been going through its many stages I have made it my business to learn more than I knew about the roads of this country. I am afraid I may be told by an influential paper to-morrow morning that it is an impudent disregard of the House
that I should be thinking of going on roads before the Bill became law. Still, it is an exceedingly useful thing to do. I have studied the roads in this country, in a considerable portion of Germany, in Belgium, and in France, and I have also seen the results of the heavy road work done by the Roads Department in France. I have come very definitely to the conclusion that, alike in material, in method and in the skill of our roadmakers, we have nothing to learn from our neighbours. We can make the best roads in the world. There is a good deal to learn, and we shall probably learn it, in regard to the provision of better road material and improved surfaces, but at the same time I do not think we have anything to learn from our neighbours. Perhaps they have something to learn from us. None the less it is a fact that the roads of this country are not fitted for heavy traffic or for the traffic that we must get on to them if we are to open up the countryside. For one thing they are not wide enough; you get them blocked everywhere. I feel sure I shall have the support of those who so successfully safeguarded the road interests when I ask for money for better roads.
As to canals, I think that there we have really the most difficult problem of the lot. The theory that a canal can be provided just the same as a road, without a toll, or with a very modest toll, without regard to financial expenditure, is an enticing theory, but it is very difficult to apply in practice in a country which is as poor as we are. It is proposed to take the matter up where it was left by the Royal Commission on Canals in 1909, and to see whether in our financial circumstances we can develop the policy of improving our waterways by a definite, thought-out system. As regards organisation, I think it may interest the House if I tell them what we have in mind. It is not intended, as I have said before—at any rate, for two years, and I fervently hope not after—to centralise the management of these undertakings in Whitehall. I look on that as the road to absolute catastrophe. In the meantime, it is proposed to maintain on the railways, more or less as to-day, the Railway Executive Committee. The House will realise that the Committee is a rather peculiar body for permanent use. With the exception of the President of the Board of Trade, it consists of the general managers of the railways. They became, when they were appointed, officials of the
Government, but at the same time they are the people with whom discussions have to take place as to the position between the Government and the railways. They have to act in a dual capacity. Therefore, though they have done most excellent work in a most patriotic way, I think it may be necessary to some extent to modify the procedure and powers and constitution of the Railway Executive Committee. The best analogy I know of the relationship, for these two years of the Ministry of Ways and Communications, if it is set up, and the railways, is the relationship between the Indian Railway Board and the consulting engineers for the Government of India and the railways there, in which the Government have a financial interest. That is probably the best model we have for present purposes.
As regards roads, the Bill takes over the functions of the Road Board, and with the Advisory Committee it is hoped that we shall be able to develop a road policy. The classification of the roads will be the first step towards that end—classifying the roads and working them out on a coherent basis. As to new schemes for road services or transportation services of any kind, the way in which it is proposed to work is as follows: In most cases I hope that the demand for a new service, be it for housing or agriculture or industry, will come from the Minister of Health, or through the Ministry of Health from the Board of Agriculture or from the Board of Trade. Then there will be requests undoubtedly from local authorities in particular districts, though in most cases I hope the demand will come from the Department charged with developing that particular part of our national activities. It is on these reports that the matter will be investigated. Ordinary conferences will take place, and eventually it is hoped that the procedure will be that an estimate of cost, of expenditure and income, will be framed. If it is commercially sound it will be proposed that the Minister should go on with it, but if it is not commercially sound the justification of it would rest with the Ministry desiring it. If the matter goes as I anticipate, it is intended to keep separate accounts showing in each of these cases how much was attributable to the development of that particular Department, and when, as I hope the House will permit, I give some of the names who are to help in this Ministry if the Bill becomes law, I think the House
will see that so far as men are concerned we are providing for a very adequate supervision.
If the House would like to know the names of the officials I will give them; otherwise I will hand them to the Press, and they will appear to-morrow. With the one exception of Roads, which we have concluded must be treated as a separate Department, it is proposed to organise the Ministry in separate branches—civil engineering, mechanical engineering, and so on. The civil engineer whom I have been fortunate enough to obtain—I would like to say that in no case has any appointment been made except contingent upon this Bill becoming law—is Sir Alexander Gibb, senior partner in the firm of Easton Gibb and Company, whose last and possibly best-known work was the large naval dock at Rosyth. Sir Alexander Gibb was chief engineer for docks with the British Armies in France, and is civil engineer-in-chief at the Admiralty. The mechanical engineer is Sir John Aspinall, late general manager of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. It is proposed that he should be the consultant mechanical engineer. He will not be a whole-time man. He has an absolutely unique knowledge and experience of standardisation. He is president of the Institute of Civil Engineers, and I count the Government very fortunate indeed in getting the promise of his services. The mechanical engineer who will do the day-to-day work is Colonel Simpson, late traction superintendent of the Buenos Ayres Pacific Railway, who was in charge of the railway equipment and rolling stock of the British Armies in France, and did there very excellent work. He was originally trained on the Great Eastern Railway, not on the North-Eastern.
The Chief of the Statistics and Accounts Department is Sir George Beharrell, who has the misfortune to have been a North-Eastern Railway official. He was statistician to the Gun and Ammunition Department of the Ministry of Munitions, statistician to the Transportation Department in France, and then statistician to the Admiralty, and those who know his work, I can assure the House, will fully appreciate him. Sir George Beharrell, on the formation of the Ministry, will definitely leave the North-Eastern Railway. The secretary and solicitor will be Sir Francis Dunnell, the secretary and solicitor of the North-Eastern railway, who is lent; there is no arrangement with
him as to his retention in the Ministry. No terms have been arranged with him at all, and he is lent by the North-Eastern Railway, I think, during the pleasure of the Board, and as there has been so much said about these North-Eastern Railway officials, I should like to say that these are the only two principal officers of the Ministry who have been approached to take service in the Ministry who have ever served the North-Eastern Railway at all.
The control of licences and labour questions and regulations, the work of which will be transferred from other Government Departments, will be undertaken by Sir William Marwood, Joint Permanent Secretary to the Board of Trade. I am very glad indeed that Sir William Mar-wood has seen his way to promise to transfer to the new Ministry, and no one has such experience in these matters as he. In charge of movement and traffic working will be Sir Philip Nash, who was assistant general manager of the East Indian Railway and late Director-General of Transportation in France and was originally trained on the Great Northern Railway. Then, in order that there should be complete impartiality between the railways and roads and canals, the officer who will be charged with all questions of development and deciding on the facts of the case—which is the best method of dealing with them, subject to the advice he will get—is from the Senior Service, Rear-Admiral Sir Charles Bartolomé, who was the Controller of the Admiralty up to the end of the War, and is an officer of the very highest ability. Sir Henry Maybury takes the Roads, and he is very well known to most Members of this House.
The other point which I should like to mention is that of financial control, and there I count that we are at any rate as fortunate as in the best of these other appointments. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has given mo permission to tell the House that he has retained the services of Sir Hardman Lever, who has done most valuable work, as many Members of the House will know, during the War here. He is in America at present. He has accepted the position to come over here for a limited time, I agree, and he will be the Finance member representing the Treasury in the office of the Ministry of Ways and Communications. He will be their financial
adviser, and will be in the building as a watch-dog in residence, and I am sure that that will give satisfaction to the House.
I apologise for having taken up so much time, but I thought it would be for the general convenience if I dealt at some little length with some of the aspects of this question. I am sure it is inevitable that some such powers as are contained in this Bill must be given now to the Government to deal with the transportation question. Some of them are essential, if we are not going to spoil the whole scheme—some of them are essential to fulfil the election pledges of all Members of the House, and, while it has been suggested that this is the first step towards nationalisation, I do not think it has been suggested that it was designedly the first step, but I would like to tell the House that in considering this problem, and considering what we ought to put in this Bill, we all came to the conclusion, both I and those who have been advising me, and the members of the Government who discussed the thing in detail, that there was only one alternative to a Bill like this at the present time—I do not say this exact Bill, but a Bill giving practically these powers—and that one alternative was immediate nationalisation of the railways. It was the only alternative we could see. It may be the right thing, or it may not be the right thing. I still maintain the position, which some hon. Members have rather commented adversely upon, that I have no policy. I am glad I have got no policy on this, because I do not want to decide a thing like this, and advise the Government on a thing like this, without the most careful investigation. Honestly, I believe, and I have always believed from the beginning, that the alternative to a Bill on these lines is nationalisation, and we did not want to go in for that now.

Mr. WILSON-FOX: I am sure that the House has listened with the greatest possible interest to the speech which my right hon. Friend the Minister-designate has just delivered, and I feel certain that had it been possible to make the statement he has made to-day at an earlier stage, there would have been in some quarters far less apprehension as to his motives and intentions than has been the case. I am extremely glad to have the opportunity this afternoon of offering a few remarks on the principles of the Bill, because, largely owing to indisposition, I have had no previous opportunity of doing so, though I
have taken some part in the discussions on the Committee and Report stages. Personally, although I did not agree with all the provisions of the Bill, as introduced, I did welcome its introduction, because, from the study which I have given to these questions, I have formed the conclusion that some large measure was necessary, in order to prevent the waste which was certainly going on in connection with the various agencies concerned with transport in this country. If I may be permitted to digress for one moment, I should like to observe that transport is a branch of human effort which, though useful and necessary for the purpose of distributing wealth, does not itself produce any wealth, and therefore it is essential that, as far as is possible, the waste of human effort in particular should be avoided in connection with it, because every man in the country employed upon transport services is potentially wasting his time, from the point of view of the national production of wealth. If we can release men who are unnecessarily engaged upon transport work so as to set them free to engage directly in the production of material wealth, that is, pro tanto, an advantage to the community, and I feel certain that no local or sectional interests should be allowed to stand in the way of the national interest—at this time of great national poverty—of increasing our production of wealth to the utmost possible extent. That alone, apart from the bearing which efficient or non-efficient transport has upon the great industries and trade of this country; is a sufficiently adequate reason for reviewing our house of transport and, if possible, of setting it in order.
At the first inspection of the contents of this Bill as it was laid before the House, it was quite obvious that the Bill itself was, if I may say so, based upon war methods. I do not think it would be an unfair summary of the receipt which was followed in framing it to say that the desire was to appoint a super-man to run the whole business of transportation, to give him powers to do anything, at any time, and at any cost. Given the right superman, and especially in war-time, that might be quite the right policy; but its radical drawback in this country is that it does fail to take into account our national dislike of autocracy. The Britisher hates to be bossed; the Hun likes it. That represents a very radical difference in national temperaments, and I should like especially to say that the ob-
jections taken to the Bill by many people on this ground had nothing whatsoever to do with antipathy to or fear of the Minister-designate himself. Perhaps that fear is justified partly by the failure of some of our most recent super-men to do all that was expected of them, and partly because the historical analogy does in some degree support that fear. One of the most early instances in history of super-men was one who, the House will remember, in his later years had his hair cut by a super-woman, and then pulled the house down. We do not want any such catastrophe in this case, and we cannot afford to run the risk of having the house of transport pulled down about our ears. That, I think, is a very natural feeling, and it is one which I am sure the Minister-designate has thoroughly understood, and with which to some extent he will sympathise. But the result of that attitude was that there was necessarily a tendency to examine his proposals somewhat more critically and microscopically than would otherwise have been the case, and perhaps to switch off the attention of the critics of the Bill from its broader aspects and to cause them to concentrate upon the smaller questions in which they were more particularly concerned.
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It was this feeling which prompted Members of the House to attempt to place, —and in some cases they have succeeded in placing—limitations upon the powers of the Minister-designate. The Bill has come before us at a time when many people and many industries have been smarting under a, sense of grievances and injuries which they have sustained at the end of a long period of very trying Government control. The more they have seen it at close quarters, the less they have liked it, and that alone produces an atmosphere in the country, if not of hostility to, at any rate of suspicion of any proposal intended to perpetuate the state of affairs under which they have undoubtedly suffered. But I for one, while I understand and to some extent share the views which I have endeavoured to summarise, feel, with the Prime Minister, that the time has come to set aside our fears and prejudices. We must be ready, whether we like it or not, to take the bold course and to adopt bold courses when they commend themselves to our reason. In this particular case, my work on the Select Committee on Trans
port, which reported in the last Parliament, convinced me that, in the words of our Report,
The organisation of the transport agencies of the country, and particularly of the railways, cannot be allowed to return to its pre-war position.
I draw special attention to this passage in that Report, because there has been, to some extent, a false impression abroad in regard to it. The passage which I have just read referred to all the transportation of the country, and was not limited to the railways. The Minister-designate himself—quite unintentionally, I am sure —in his speech on the Second Reading of the Bill, rather conveyed—it cannot possibly have suited him to do it—this misleading impression. He said:
A Select Committee of this House considered this important matter also, and they came to the conclusion that the railways could not go back to their old position, but they were not able to say what the cure was, and I think that on the information before them they could have come to no other conclusion."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th March, 1919, col. 1771, Vol. 113.]
The omission from the passage I have read of any allusion to other agencies of transport besides the railways has, perhaps, to some extent obscured the fact that the Select Committee was of the opinion that all the transport agencies of the country required to be reviewed and improved. While the Report of that Select Committee can be cited generally in favour of the principles embodied in this Bill, or the objects aimed at in this Bill, it cannot be quoted in support of all the details and methods. That Committee reported long before the time at which they possibly could have gone into all the questions on which it was necessary to pronounce a final opinion. But, so far as it went, it can properly and correctly be cited as being in favour of a unified treatment of the whole subject.
I am convinced—and I am sure no one feels it more strongly than the Minister-designate—that it would have been far more satisfactory to the House and the country if he had been able to come down at the beginning of this Session with a cut-and-dried scheme, properly thought out and worked out, and laid it before the House and asked it to judge it; but nobody knows better than myself that his frank explanation of his difficulties must necessarily be the correct one. It would have been impossible to have concluded any really exhaustive examination of the many intricate ques-
tions that will have to be gone into before the final policy with regard to our transport can be determined upon in the limited time at his disposal. I should have been I greatly afraid of any programme which had been brought before the House in a hurry, and I do not believe it would have been possible for the Government to give any convincing argument or proof it at that time they had decided upon the final policy. Certainly neither I nor my colleagues on that Committee can possibly blame the Government for stopping at the point where our own inquiries had stopped. I myself would have been the first to blame him if he had endeavoured to rush the matter. It is far too important. It enters far too deeply into the life of the country for that, and I am the more satisfied that his decision is the right one when he tells us this afternoon that if he had attempted to rush matters, the only alternatives before him were nationalisation or a Bill of this character.
If we accept his statement, as we must, then I feel sure the House will see that he did the right thing in coming before the House with a Bill which gave opportunity for inquiry and reflection; and, on the whole, taking the proceedings in Committee, I think the House has accepted that view without hesitation, and without question, and that the House has adopted the right course in endeavouring, so far as it could, to limit the powers of the Minister where it was necessary, and in endeavouring, in co-operation with him, to improve the Bill. That, I think, on the whole, has been very satisfactorily done. I am very glad that the Minister-designate has given some further explanation of the figures which he brought before the House on Second Reading, and the more he gives full explanations of a financial character to this House in connection with the many matters which from time to time must arise out of this Bill, the better will be his position in this House and in the country. He has nothing to fear from this House if he keeps it fully and frequently informed on all matters relevant to his Department. He has to deal with matters of great importance and great interest to everyone, and I am certain if he will recognise that the fuller the information he gives to the House, the better we shall be pleased, he will greatly facilitate his great task.
The fundamental idea of this Bill is to place all powers and duties in relation to
all forms of internal transport, with the exception of aerial transport, in the hands of one administrative Department. Anybody, I am sure, who has thought this matter over carefully must admit that this is an absolutely necessary step if the various forms of transport within this small Island are to be properly coordinated, and I was very glad to hear the Minister-designate disclaim any intention whatsoever of centralising the management of all our great transport agencies into an office at Whitehall. I should have expected that that would have been the view held by a man with such experience-in these matters as the Minister-designate, and I was all the more pleased to hear him pronounce it as his definite view and definite policy, because if the whole of the transport agencies of the country were to be run by one man and one Department at Whitehall, I believe he would be heading, not towards an improved and a more-efficient system of transport, but to a thoroughly inefficient system, which would be bound to break down. But, as regards the work of co-ordination of all these; various activities, I for one do not attach great importance to the criticism that one man cannot undertake that work, and cannot be expected to do so, because I do not see that, after all, the duties which are being imposed upon him will be any greater than those which have to be performed, or had to be performed before the War, by, say, the President of the Board of Trade, who was concerned, not only with trade questions, but with various shipping and sea questions, with railway questions, and numberless other questions, none of which could possibly have had devoted to them the time required to manage them, but the President of the Board of Trade was able, to some extent, though not nearly to a sufficient extent, to regulate and supervise a number of matters in these various capacities.
After all, the greatest business of all in our Government to-day is the management, supervision, and control of the Empire, and that duty is really imposed upon the Prime Minister, with whatever assistance he receives from his colleagues and the able officials of the Government Departments. The responsibility of seeing that things do not go wrong must, in, the end, devolve upon the Prime Minister, and the duties which the Minister-designate assumes under this Bill are certainly not comparable with those we are accustomed to expect to be satisfactorily
performed by the Prime Minister of this country. Now, if the view is correct that the Bill is primarily intended to regulate and control all forms of transport, and not to manage individual forms of transport, I do not think we need be afraid that the Department will favour one form of transport as against another. I do not know why we should assume that, because a man has in the past made his reputation as a great railway manager, he should necessarily, through the remainder of his life, have an unconscious bias in favour of railways. Any broad-minded man—and no one, I think, will deny that the Minister-designate falls within that description— can during various, periods of his life engage in different forms of work and not go through the remainder of his life handicapped by a series of biases with which he will have clothed himself in the past.
An idea which has perhaps been prevalent in regard to the Minister-designate—if he will pardon my referring at some length to these matters of rather a personal character—is that, true, the Minister-designate was a great success during the War, but look what it cost! He spent money like water. It did not matter how much he spent, provided he got results. He got results, true, but now he is going on after the War, flinging money about with both hands, and we shall be brought to bankruptcy if we give him his way. I suggest that is scarcely a fair view, because if the War has developed in the Minister-designate—I do not say it has; I hope it has not—these habits of extravagance, it is fair to remember that, before the War, the Minister-designate in two countries had reached positions of great commercial importance, and I should hope that the qualities and the experience which gained him those positions in competition with all other railwaymen, will perhaps have left with him a corrective of any bias, and that he will not like to waste money, and will desire to run concerns with which he is connected at a profit. I have heard him speak on many matters in connection with this Bill, and certainly the impression which I have formed is that, so far from being unmindful of the commercial aspects of the undertakings with which he is connected, he does attach very considerable importance to the commercial and financial aspects of these questions. If I did not feel this, I should not be prepared to give him as full a support as, at the present moment, I am certainly minded to do. I stated, I think, on the Report
stage, that I had had an opportunity of seeing some of the war work of the Minister-designate, and that one of the greatest enterprises associated with his name—the establishment of the new port at Richborough, where these large barge services and train-ferry services have been instituted—certainly do not give me the idea that the man who initiated those undertakings, which undoubtedly have been of the utmost value during the War, is hopelessly destitute of commercial instinct. As I told the House, the result of the inquiries which I had the opportunity of making, and also of consulting experts, was I believed that that great undertaking had been a success, not only from the war point of view, but from the business point of view. In other words, the conclusion I personally arrived at was that these large tonnages had been transported to and from France more cheaply over a long period of time than could have been done by any other form of transport during that period: I have very great pleasure In stating that fact to the House.
In my view, the functions of the Ministry should be—and I do not doubt will be—to secure the efficiency of all our transport agencies so far as that can possibly be brought about. To do this it will be necessary for the Minister to control and regulate other people engaged in the management of particular undertakings, to supervise their activities, to inspect what they are doing, and, if satisfied that assistance is deserved, and required, to assist them so far as possible to play their part in the general scheme of national transport. We have never had anybody who had the responsibility and duty in the past of playing that part. I think we may congratulate ourselves that a new era is about to commence, and that in future there will be somebody not interested commercially in the success of these forms of transport who will make it his business to help them in every possible way to carry out their business effectively, and who, on due cause shown, will have the power and authority to come to this House and ask it to approve of large schemes in the national interest. But, while I say this, I am quite confident that we are not going to get success merely by the passing of this Bill. Success can only be attained if we have the right men at the top. For that reason we naturally all look forward with the greatest possible anxiety at what will, in fact, be the action of the Ministry under the powers
conferred on it by this Bill. It will be a case of "By their fruits ye shall know them." I am sure the House wishes the Minister-designate to be quite convinced of the strong feeling which exists upon that point.
I am very glad the Minister-designate has referred this afternoon to the question of nationalisation. It is certainly true that much hostility has been aroused to the Bill owing to the idea, which has been widely prevalent, that this is the first step towards the nationalisation of the transport agencies. As I said, I think, on the Report stage—and it has been confirmed by the Minister-designate this afternoon— I do not find anywhere in the Bill that this is the first step towards nationalisation. Strangely though it may seem, I do regard this Bill as in some measure a bulwark against nationalisation. Nationalisation is often used as a catchword. There are very few people who have taken the trouble to think out for themselves exactly what they mean by it. It is used in many different senses. It was for that reason that the Select Committee over which I had the honour to preside devoted a considerable share of their attention, and their Report, to trying to define the issues which are involved in this question. I believe, in the end, those passages in that Report, which do to some extent, I hope, clear up the situation, will be regarded as really the most valuable work which, in the short time at its disposal, that Select Committee succeeded in carrying out. We are in the position that the country is not committed to any hasty action. It is allowed a period of two years for a very close study of the questions involved, the examination of many witnesses, and the consideration of the interests affected. In some eases, though not in all, the study will involve technical inquiries, and possibly, as the Minister-designate has told us, research. Until that work has been carried out by some body, impartial and competent—and I do not refer to such a body as lately reported on the coal question—until such a body as I have described has made its inquiries, I hope that this House will not be prepared to proceed at all along the path of nationalisation.
Though I do not believe it will be found to be the case, I agree that nationalisation must be considered at present as a possible policy. The onus of proving that we should run no risk of adopting it by
the facts by inquiries elsewhere, and what there has been the result—the onus, I say, of proving, in view of this, that nationalisation should be adopted here, certainly lies upon the shoulders of those who suggest it. Therefore, I am certain that this House will not be justified in adopting any such policy until after the expiration of the period of inquiry that is provided under the Bill. It may be that the Government—I assume that they will—will consider at some later stage, possibly, whether they will adopt the advice of the Select Committee by reconstituting a similar body. But I am certainly not going to suppose that the Minister-designate will now anticipate the view he may form later on that matter, or give any pledge on that point. In continuation, however, of what I said previously, I am certain that the more the right hon. Gentleman does give large bodies of Members of this House the opportunity of acquainting themselves at firsthand with the facts and figures involved in these most important matters the easier he will find it to carry the House with him in any large proposals he may make for transport reform.
The spirit in which this Bill is going to be administered by the Department is, at least, as important as the contents of the Bill. I should like again to sound the word of warning which I uttered in the course of one of the discussions. I am certain that it is the desire of the country that this Bill should be looked upon, and should be administered, as a Transport Bill, and not as a Trade Bill. It should be remembered always that transport is made for trade and not trade for transport, and that the primary functions of this Ministry should be those of a Transport Ministry and not those of a Ministry of Trade. Some of the passages in the speech of the Minister-designate on the Second Reading did, I think, perhaps give rise to the impression that there was a certain confusion of functions. I should like to state most emphatically the view that it is the business of the Ministry to provide efficient transport for purposes of trade where it exists, and where it is practically certain that it is going to arise, and to supply what is necessary for that purpose; it is not part of the functions of the Ministry to endeavour to divert trade from its natural channels and cause it to flow in new ones. That is an. opinion which is extremely strongly held in many quarters, and is one with which
the Minister-designate will be wise to reckon. Finally, I should like to congratulate the Minister-designate on the way in which he has met the strong criticism and the strong opposition aroused in many quarters. I am sure that the concessions ho has made have been wisely made, and that he will not find them a handicap upon his efforts in the future. I hope that what he has already done will enable this Third Reading to be passed without a Division, so that it may go forth from this House as an earnest of the desire of Members to further that great policy of reconstruction to which all Members of the Coalition pledged themselves at the last election.

Lieut.-General Sir AYLMER HUNTER-WESTON: As there is still considerable doubt in the minds of many Members of this House as to whether the powers to be given to the new Ministry by this Bill are not too great, and a further fear that the various powers thus given may be mishandled, I think it may be of interest and advantage to this House if I, who have the privilege of being the senior of the many hon. Members who have served across the Channel, were to give my experience of the working of this very same system of unified control of all means of transportation.
The effects on transportation of the lack of unified control of Ways and Communications in Great Britain at present are in many ways similar to those from which we suffered in France at the time of the first battle of the Somme, in 1916, before a Director - General of Transportation was appointed. If we take the trouble to inform ourselves as to the immense improvement in the conditions at the front effected by unified control of transport under a chief who knew his job, and who had power to translate his plans into action, we shall realise how certain it is that similar action at home will produce amelioration of the very similar defects which confront us here.
On the Somme we were hopelessly bogged, not alone by the calcareous mud of the battlefield, into which men and mules sank above their knees in their endeavour to get food, water, and ammunition up to the men and guns in the front line, but bogged even more effectually by the chaotic state of our transportation behind. But, though this is a just criticism, do not let anyone be so lacking in sense of perspective or
breadth of judgment as to blame the transport officials of those days. They were splendid men, doing magnificent work, which was most successful within the limits of their task and outlook. But they were working in watertight compartments. One authority was responsible for the discharge of the ships. Another authority was responsible for the handling of the goods on the quays. The French were responsible for movement by rail, and for the provision of rolling stock beyond the small amount of British stock then available. The responsibility for seeing that trains were unloaded was divided, and it was not the business of any one man to see that the staff for unloading was available on the arrival of the train. There were separate inland water services, both French and British. The few light railways or tramways we then had had nothing to do with any other form of transport. The roads, again, were maintained, some by the French, some by us, and for all we lacked both labour and road material.
Each of these many links of what should have been a chain were well formed and strong, but they were of varying power, and were not properly joined. They were incapable, therefore, of doing the work that might have been expected from the strength and beauty of the individual links, for the strength of a system of transportation lies, as in a chain, in its weakest link. Looking back on the far-off days of 1916, it is easy to recognise that, however efficient each of our various Departments concerned with transportation may have been in themselves, the result of their efforts could not but be inefficient, for it lacked higher organisation and unified control. The whole process of transportation, from the arrival of the ship in port until the goods in her reach their destination, is one long chain of interdependent links, and it cannot be too strongly insisted upon that to attain efficiency in this chain of transportation, both in war and peace, the problem must be regarded as one, and the whole process so directed and organised that there is no break in the chain from a weak link, no waste of work or material by the interposition of a link that is unnecessarily heavy or too highly polished.
In the present state of development of civilisation it is impossible to attain efficiency in government or business, or that great and terrible business—War—
without clear thought crystallised into systematic action, which is true organisation. Organisation, Organisation, and again Organisation, is the secret of success, not only in the limited environment of individual business or departments, but in the higher direction which with calm judgment, great breadth of view and big perspective, co-ordinates—that is organises—the efforts of each for the good of all. We are all now wise after the event and recognise that we lacked that true organisation of our transportation in France in 1916. It now seems incredible that all those many transport authorities should have been allowed to work separately, without effective unified control. It is even more incredible that there are so many who still fail to see that the state of separate and unorganised effort in Britain at the present time is as bad or worse than that then obtaining in France.
The present diseases of our transport are so similar to those diagnosed in France by our transport physician that it is certain that similar treatment will lead to similar cure. Unified control when introduced in France led to rapid and marvellous improvement. Let us take some of the results. Imports were nearly doubled in the first few months after unification of control of all means of transportation was instituted. The actual figures were 130,000 tons per week in 1917, and 240,000 tons per week a few months later. The rate of discharge increased nearly fourfold. It was 10 tons per ship per hour in 1917, and 37½ tons per hour in 1918. The use of shipping tonnage increased twenty-fold. Whereas there were 100 ship days lost per week in 1917, there were only five ship days lost per week in 1918. The loaded trains run to railhead were nearly doubled, from 92 per day in 1917 to 170 per day in 1918. These are only a few quotations, but throughout there is a similar improvement. With these figures before us, can we hesitate as to the advisability of this Bill?
Unity of control solved the problem in France by:

(1) The avoidance of congestion at ports and on railways due to the possibility of ensuring a steady flow of traffic over the transport system generally.
(2) The systematic development of all transport facilities on a well thought out plan.
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(3) The control of the whole system by a settled policy in the general interest, instead of a variable policy serving local interest.
The unity of control introduced by this Bill will, I am convinced, go far to solve the difficult problem of transportation at home, a problem which lies at the root of all reconstruction in this country.
One of the fears most generally expressed is that the Ministry of Ways and Communications will be very extravagant, and in support of this the statement is made that the administration of the Director-General of Transport in France had no thought of economy. It is perhaps difficult for anyone not conversant with the facts to appreciate the fallacy of this statement. It is true that the necessity for rapid action made a large immediate outlay necessary. But this outlay repaid itself even in pounds, shillings and pence before the end of the War, and the saving effected by it in men's lives was incalculable. Most people are content, when they talk of economy, to think of financial economy only, but to those who had the responsibility of command in the field the consideration of economy was not only in pounds, shillings and pence, but in those even more important units, namely, men and material. Those of us who were charged with the duty of ensuring that the fighting forces under our commands were supplied with adequate means of transport, or, in other words, with mobility, will remember the care with which our demands for roads, railways, etc., were scrutinised by this Transportation Authority. The difficulties of manpower and the shortness of material made the utmost economy essential.
To ensure economy and that there should be neither extravagance nor overlapping, a most careful system of statistical and economic control was instituted; a system that would have been impossible if the whole business of movement had not been the responsibility of one man. The loading of trains was more carefully watched than in the commercial practice of any country in the world. The detention of wagons at railhead was measured, not by days (the usual commercial practice), but by quarters of an hour, with the result that the railhead times—the average number of hours spent by a train from arrival at railhead till it was unloaded and left again—was reduced from fourteen to
twelve and a-half, and this notwithstanding the greater traffic and the greater proximity of railheads to the firing line. Similarly, coal consumption was brought down in the proportion of six to four. And the ton-miles per power unit per day for light railways was more than doubled, being raised in eight months from 325 to 658. I have already given you figures of the improvements effected at the docks. Similar improvement, leading to similar economy, was seen in every direction. For instance, the output of quarries in tons per man per week increased from 7 to 12½ and the number of men employed in maintenance per mile of road was reduced from 10 to 5½, less than a third, though our roads were out of all comparison better, and better maintained. In nothing was improvement more noticeable than in roads.
As an Army Corps commander I have seen the great advantages that have accrued in France to our soldiers and our cause from unified control of all forms of transport under the direction of a man who knew his job, who had power to translate his plans into action, and who was assisted by an able staff, men who were and are drawn from roads, docks, and every form of transportation, and not, as is so generally stated, from railways only. I should be failing in my duty both to the Army and to this House if I did not take this opportunity of expressing the gratitude felt by all soldiers who were in a high enough position to judge towards the men who effected so marvellous an improvement in our transport, and therefore in our conditions at the front. Seldom is a country, when faced with the necessity of making a change in so vital a matter as its system of transportation, given an opportunity of having a trial of the proposed new system, on a colossal scale, and in somewhat similar circumstances. Fortunate are we that, in this great subject of transportation, on which our future depends, Fate has willed that we should have been given so splendid a trial, fortunate in having a trial, not only of the system, but of the men, fortunate above all in its overwhelming success. For it was undoubtedly the system worked by these men, and whole-heartedly backed by our great Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig, and our far-sighted and courageous Prime Minister, which transformed our transportation from the chaos of the days of the Battle of the Somme to the marvellous efficiency of the final period. It was the unified control of all
transportation which alone gave us the necessary mobility, and made our final victorious and glorious advance possible. I appeal, therefore, to all in this House to join with me in whole-heartedly backing this Bill.

Sir RICHARD COOPER: I beg to move, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words
upon this day three months.
When this Bill was first introduced, and before the Second Reading, I gave it, as every hon. Member did, the very closest study, and I was forced irresistibly to the conclusion that the principles upon which it was based were highly dangerous to the welfare of this country, and holding that view I did my utmost on the Second Reading in opposing it, and I registered my vote against it. Since that time the Bill has passed through the fire of criticism both in Committee upstairs and on Report in this House. While I am quite prepared to believe that, on the whole, the Bill emerges to-day better than it was when it passed the Second Reading, yet I cannot find that the fundamental principles upon which it is based are in the slightest degree altered by any of the Amendments made either in Committee or on the Report stage. For that reason I conceive it to be my duty to again take, on this Third Reading, the step which I took on the Second Reading, and I only hope that on this occasion I shall at least succeed in being able to register my vote in the Division Lobby in opposition to the Government. The right hon. Gentleman the Minister-designate gave us a very interesting statement as to the necessity for the co-ordination and closer working of our transport system, and he also rendered great service to us in giving us a greater insight into the general principles on which he is determined to administer the Bill when it becomes law. But his speech did not, so far as I understood it, alter in the least those fundamental principles to which I take exception.
At the last General Election the Prime Minister and those who supported him did without question put before the country as one of the principal policies of reconstruction the co-ordination and improvement of the whole transport system, and it so happens that at Wolverhampton the right hon. Gentleman devoted quite a quarter of a very long speech to this par-
ticular proposal. Therefore, for the coordination and improvement of the transport system, beyond any question, the Government has an absolutely firm mandate from the people of this country. I agreed at that time with that policy. I agree with it to-day. I think it is highly desirable it should be brought about. I realise as strongly as any hon. Member that our present system of transport in every direction is uneconomical and grossly wasteful, and that it offers the most unlimited opportunities to the right man to provide for the traders and consumers of this country advantages which before the War were entirely lost to them—advantages which, in view of the effects of the War upon our transport system, are, perhaps, ten times more important to us to-day than they were before the War broke out Therefore I desire, in moving the rejection of the Bill, to make it abundantly clear that I am most earnestly and warmly in favour of the unification of control, the better co-ordination, and the general improvement of our transport system, and if it should be that this Bill really and rightly does perform that without any unreasonable disadvantages to the country, I have to admit that my own. views are wrong and that there is no justification for taking the line I am adopting this evening. But unhappily—and I say unhappily because at this time national unity in this House and in the country is as necessary as ever it was during the War— I think I am right in saying that one of His Majesty's Ministers on Saturday or Monday last made a statement to the effect that the peril to the United Kingdom to-day was probably as great as ever during the War—I am convinced that His Majesty's Government have not taken the correct course in carrying out their policy enunciated at the General Election, and therefore I feel bound to persist in moving this Amendment.
I certainly would support the control and co-ordination on broad principles of the whole of our transport system, but this Bill goes very much further than that. It not only takes full control of all our transport, but it takes full charge and responsibility for their finance and for their administration in every detail, and that is the point where I entirely dissociate myself from this Bill and where I entirely disagree with the proposals which have been put forward. In other words, the really crucial point is whether this Bill is
nationalisation or whether it is not. No one will deny that at the time of the Second Reading there were a very large number of Members of this House, certainly over ninety, supporters of the Coalition Government, who expressed their intention of opposing the Bill solely on the ground that it meant nationalisation. They believed it firmly then, but to-day they have been persuaded that their fears were unfounded and that the Bill is now free from that objection. I would ask, and I hope some member of the Government will later on in this Debate say definitely, what change has been made in this. Bill since the Second Beading-which has converted a nationalisation Bill on the Second Reading into a non-nationalisation Bill on the Third Reading? I anxiously desire to know how that change has come about. It is true, as one of my hon. Friends has pointed out, that there is a great deal of confusion and perhaps difficulty in determining what is nationalisation. I am not going to hesitate to express my own opinion on that point. I will give my description of the term which makes me determine that this Bill is a nationalisation Bill. I regard nationalisation as possession and administration by the State.

Sir FORTESCUE FLANNERY: Without ownership?

Sir R. COOPER: It may be true that for some time—I believe for only a short time—the State will not own the railways or canals or docks or any other part of our transport system, by paying over the estimated capital value of those undertakings. But it is ownership, none the less, if they undertake to pay uneconomical dividends on capital, and therefore their ownership under this Bill, and in that sense, is complete. Its nationalisation, as I define it, was amply; supported by the Minister-designate himself in his speech on the Second Reading. The right hon. Gentleman said, "You may ensure an adequate and efficient service, but if you cannot get that by means of private management, then nationalise." What is this Bill but taking the transport service deliberately out of private management and putting it under the management of the State? That is, I think, a fair interpretation of the words of the right hon. Gentleman which I have just quoted. "If you cannot get an efficient service by means of private management, then nationalise." I say the Government in this Bill is carrying out
the very principle which the right hon. Gentleman himself laid down on the Second Reading.
It will equally be admitted in this House that at the General Election there was never a question of the Government asking, in connection with this transport service or in any other connection, for any mandate for nationalisation. That is beyond any dispute. There is, therefore, no mandate for it. One right hon. Gentleman, the Secretary of State for War (Mr. Churchill), during the election deliberately and strongly stated that if the Prime Minister's supporters were returned the railways would be nationalised. The greatest enemy of the right hon. Gentleman in this House would never dare suggest that he would dream of making that statement at Dundee unless he knew entirely that he had some fair ground for making it. But there is something else to support this belief. The railwaymen—I am speaking from experience in the Midlands; I do not know whether it is the same throughout the county—but, at any rate, the railwaymen in the Midlands are satisfied that the Prime Minister himself, during the election, promised the right hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Thomas), who is the representative in this House of the National Union of Railway-men, that if he Were returned to power the nationalisation of railways would follow. That belief is held by them. I admit I have no evidence to prove whether it is true or not, but I would ask how has it come to be spread amongst a very considerable section of railwaymen in the Black Country—in Birmingham and around Derby?
I will suggest another point in support of my belief. How comes it that the representatives of Labour in this House are all ardently in support of this Bill and have stated in the constituencies that it is nationalisation? Many of their most responsible— well, I will withdraw that word, because I do not regard some of the Gentlemen I am speaking of as being responsible leaders in the country—hut, at any rate, some of the most powerful leaders of Labour in the country at the present time are stating over and over again that this Bill means the nationalisation of railways, and that it is the stepping-stone to the nationalisation of the coal mines, and that, ultimately, they are going to nationalise the land and all forms of production from one end of the country to the other. Labour believe it. Hon. Gentlemen who, perhaps,
understand this matter better than I do,, will surely agree with me in saying that this Bill is nationalisation and nothing else. [HON MEMBERS: "No, no: !"] May I ask hon. Members who represent Labour in this House if they are prepared to deny,, at any rate, that it is the stepping-stone towards the nationalisation that they are looking forward to? They do not deny it. It shows how far removed are the representatives of Labour in this House from those extreme Labour leaders throughout the country. It is about time that those who claim to be the representatives of Labour settled their own differences, and really determined what nationalisation is or is not. I have not only given my own opinion, but I have tried to give some-reasonable primá facie evidence to support my contention that this is a nationalisation Bill, and that it is sheer hypocrisy for the-Government to pretend that it is not.
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I think I am right also in reminding the House that after the Second Reading of this Bill, when the Government learnt how strong was the opposition amongst the Coalition Members, a private meeting was-held of the Unionist party—it must be remembered that this is a Conservative Government—three-fourths of the Members-are Conservatives—and they were there told by the Leader of the House himself that he meant to go through with this Bill, and that if they did not support him he would resign. Is it not an extraordinary thing that these ninety or 100 Members, who believed that this Bill was a nationalisation [...], have changed their minds to-day, and arc quite satisfied that there is nothing of that sort in it? My opinion of that is that it is another illustration of the degradation of politics which is not confined to the pressure that is used to usurp the consciences of Members of the House. If hon. Members are going to support this Bill, on what grounds are they going to oppose the possession and administration of the coal industry? [HON. MEMBERS: "We are not going to!"] I have a more intelligent anticipation of what is coming than some hon. Members. It is coming, and coming very quickly. If the old Tory party, the followers of Disraeli, pass this Bill and the Nationalisation of the Coal Mines Bill, how can they refuse to give to Labour in this country the complete nationalisation of all the means of production? That is a slippery slope which I am not prepared to tread. I am not prepared to support the Bill, because
I believe it is the beginning of that dangerous incline on which I am so sorry to see some of my most intelligent Friends so gladly allowing themselves to descend. The Bill, in my estimation, is nothing else but an industrial revolution carried out by a Conservative Government, one of the last things any member of the Conservative party in days gone by would have dreamt it possible they would have lent themselves to. A Coalition Government composed mainly of Conservatives are supporting Socialists and Syndicalists and, for all we know, revolutionaries. This Bill has already introduced uncertainty into every industry. That was admitted in the right hon. Gentleman's speech. Industrial peace will be rendered far more difficult when this Bill has been passed than it ever was before. That is my main and fundamental objection to the Bill. That is the principal reason which has compelled me to say plainly that I am going to do my utmost to register my vote in opposition to it.
But there are three other reasons which are in themselves important. First of all, it is an extraordinary thing that the Government should submit the Bill to the House, saying frankly, "We have no policy. We will take charge of all these great transport services for two years., and by that time we hope we shall manage to discover how they really ought to be worked, and then be able to submit a policy of which the House can approve, and which we can ultimately carry through". During these two years the foundation of the policy that is to be followed in years to come is going to be laid, at a time when the Government admits it does not know what is the right policy to pursue. It is a disastrous method of proceeding if we all honestly desire to get a very much improved and more economical system of transport. Putting up the roof and thinking later about doing the house and then laying the foundation is not the way for any Parliament to expect any measure to reap the benefit which they intend it to do. Then there is the question of finance and State expenditure. I am here making the error that other hon. Members are making, because I felt, when the right hon. Gentleman was speaking this afternoon, and telling the House the broad lines upon which he would administer the Bill when it is passed, if he is going to be there for the next forty or fifty years, and can main-
tain his present judgment and his present faculties, let the Bill go through. It does not matter. I think on the whole the great belief in the right hon. Gentleman's Napoleonic virtue and power is justified, and he gave strong evidence of it in his speech to-day. If we could be sure he was going to remain at the head of this Transport Department, much as I disbelieve in the Bill, I should not have very great misgiving as to its ultimate effect and the manner in which the Transport Service would be ultimately improved. But anyone who is going to support the Bill on that assumption is very short-sighted. Let us realise that we are living in the most serious times—no less serious than during the War—and for all the right hon. Gentleman knows he may not be the Minister of Transport on Christmas Day. For all we know, before that date arrives we may have an extreme Labour Government. That is more than possible. If the right hon. Gentleman, even by that time, can fulfil all the hopes we have in him, it is in the interests of the country that he should be taken away from it and made Prime Minister. If he can do that he can administer this great country and Empire to still greater advantage.
If he is going to justify his position, he will have to spend millions of money. He is going to take over— I believe he is right — the whole of the privately-owned wagons. I think they are worth about £70,000,000. Therefore, either in direct cash or in securities, he has to spend something like that amount of money before he has been administering this Bill many weeks. When you look at the scope of the Bill, and what it means from the financial point of view if the aspirations of the right hon. Gentleman are going to be carried through, in what direction has the State, either during or before the War, spent many millions of money and shown an economic financial result? Would anyone put forward the Post Office, or Telegraphs, or Telephones I Would they refer to the Metropolitan Water Board? Would they point to Slough, Chepstow, or Loch Doon? Never has the State, before or during the War, spent many millions of money, with the exception of the Suez Canal, which have ultimately shown an economic financial result. I do not know on what ground we are going to expect the administration in detail of all our transport service in the State to be carried on economically. I have the best grounds for anticipating
that it is going to cost infinitely more than it would do under private enterprise. What an example this great orgy of expenditure is to the country, when the President of the Board of Trade and the Minister for Labour within the last few days have been preaching to the country the needs of economy and wiping out extravagance, and here we are, in these very dangerous times, when the country is living on its capital and has not got the money for the Bill without drawing further on its capital, embarking on gigantic fresh expenditure! You cannot do that without approaching much nearer to the precipice of bankruptcy, which most people are wise enough not to talk of in public, but which, sub rosa, many of us seriously fear we have been getting close to. This is not the time to be embarking on a Bill which is going to run us into hundreds of millions of money if its purport is to be carried out to the full.
My last point is that of bureaucracy and officialdom. That is a very serious matter indeed. "We are bound to have thousands of new State officials. I am sure I shall be at once answered "Yes, but you are for the most part going to have existing officials who have been administering them under private enterprise." I know the right hon. Gentleman is not going to get into the Department a lot of people who know nothing about their job. He is going to try his best to get men who arc fitted for the posts. In all the work he has been associated with during the War, and notably in France, that was the secret of his success. I presume he is going to take that line now. But a capable and efficient and fully qualified man in any position high or low will give remunerative service to private enterprise, but put that man into the network of the Civil Service and his use will be reduced enormously. So I fear a number of those eminent gentlemen mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman this afternoon are going to be removed from the flywheels to the little cog-wheels. That is inevitable. It is the system of the Civil Service that frightens me—the officialdom, the bureaucracy, and the strangling of the public and the trade of the public by his Department, as is happening to-day in nearly every other Department of the State. I beg the Government to give a little attention at once to the evils of the Civil Service and its administration and red tape, and all those accusations which are made in the
Report on the Slough proposal. They must be looked into because the present system is costing the country untold value. Under this Bill I fear we are going to have this bureaucracy that we suffer from in the other Government Departments. Let the Government look into the matter and find out how this and other Departments of the State can be assured of opportunities for every man, from the highest down to the office boy, to give the greatest efficiency of which he is capable, or if he is not efficient remove him and replace him by someone who is.
That really is the fundamental difference between private enterprise and State control. A good man working under him outside the Government, free from all the influences of politics, free from all the red tape and bureaucracy of Government Departments, would give infinitely more value than if he put the same man into a Government Department. It is the bad system of the Civil Service that creates so much muddle, so many unnecessary forms which are poured in upon the working classes as well as the middle and upper classes. We are all fettered by this bureaucracy. We are all having to fill in forms galore week by week, heaven knows what for. Nearly every week there is something new being suggested by the Government. The position we are going to get into if this is not stopped, and if this reform is not made in the Civil Service, will become so intolerable that we shall see the emblems of revolution in. circles where we least expect them as the only possible hope of escaping from the pernicious and worrying system which prevails at present. The right hon. Gentleman has even given us a foretaste himself of this evil of bureaucracy. The hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. L. Scott) was anxious to insert an Amendment requiring that the Government, after taking over the railways, should be under the same obligation to deliver the goods and give the service they promise as the great railway companies are under at present. Heaven knows that at the present time the public, the trader, and the ordinary citizen is practically without redress if he is badly treated, but at least he has that Act to protect him. He has that protection if he goes to the Law Courts. The right hon. Gentleman and the Government have refused to place the Ministry of Ways and Communications in the same position as all the great railway com-
panies. What does that mean? It means the free hand, and that free hand leads to autocracy and bureaucracy. Let us remember this, especially in connection with the railway companies, that if there is one thing that the ordinary citizen complains of, and complains of rightly, in regard to the railway companies, it is that they have been in the habit, more or less, of making their own by-laws, which ultimately influence all things, and it is very difficult to withstand them. But we can withstand them, because we have the law at our back. Under this Bill the Ministry of Ways and Communications is going to make its own by-laws, which it will interpret and administer, and it is a very different thing attacking a Government Department than going into a Law Court under the British law to seek the protection of the Court according to the interpretation which your advisers put upon the law.
I will try to make something of a concrete proposal after the objections I have raised, a proposal which I think the Government could have carried out. We can learn in the first place from Holland. The right hon. Gentleman will probably know what has recently happened in Holland in connection with the discovery of coal. Coal has been discovered in Holland, and the Dutch Government at once said, "That does not belong to anybody. It is ours." Did they form a Department of State to manage it? Nothing of the sort. The Government, owning the whole of the coal in Holland, has formed a public commercial company, and it has appointed twelve selected business men as directors, and given them the power to run it like any private company. It is absolutely State-owned, but absolutely divorced from State control as far as any other company is. They have really made a private enterprise of their own possession, and have done it, I presume, because they know the great evil and the pernicious influence of politics, State interference, and red tape upon any commercial adventure of that nature. If the Dutch Government have done that I do not see why we could not make an attempt on the same lines in connection with our railways. Every hon. Member knows that the Government have to continue their control and to administer the railways for at least two years after the War. Nobody finds fault with that; it was inevitable The right hon. Gentle-
man, on the Second Reading of this Bill, admitted that it is not a railway Bill. He said that if it was a railway Bill it is a very bad one and absolutely and fundamentally wrong. However, that is the most important part of the right hon. Gentleman's work for the next two years, because he has to administer the whole of the railways of this country for that time, and he will do it under this Bill. Yet this Bill is wholly and fundamentally wrong. That is why I am moving its rejection.
The proper policy for the Government to have followed in this matter was to have appointed the right hon. Gentleman—I entirely agree with that—as the Minister of Railways for the period of two years, and at the end of that time ho could show what he has done and submit a broad policy which, presumably, during the two years he would have an opportunity of thinking out just as well and completely and efficiently as I believe he will be able to do under this Bill. If he did that he could come to this House with this policy based on his experience, based on ascertained facts, and put it before us as a carefully-thought-out plan for the co-ordination and the control of our whole transport services. Then I cannot conceive that anybody would have the feelings which have affected so many Members at one period or another during the passage of this Bill. But when he had done that I do not want him to form a State Department to administer the system in every detail. I want him at the most only to form a Government Department to control very much on the lines of an illustration, which is not quite analogous but nearly analagous, of the Board of Education controlling all the buildings and sites of schools throughout the country. They never control them or administer them in detail. That is left to the local authorities. In the case of the railways and the transport services I want the Government to control and co-ordinate them by a capable Minister; but I want the whole administration in detail carried out either by private enterprise or by a system which is similar to that which I have mentioned in the case of Holland— free from the influence of the red tape of Government Departments. I believe it is a perfectly practicable and simple thing to do.
I conceive that this Bill, not in itself, but what it is going to lead us into, is very little more than the charter of Syndicalism. If you pass this Bill to-night, you have been forced against your con-
victions to do so, and if you do take this step, you have no logical grounds in the future except following it with the nationalisation of coal, the nationalisation of mines, of land, and of all the means of production in this country. The whole of the forces of Labour, and of revolutionary Labour, are here waiting to-night to help this Conservative Government to bring about this great industrial revolution. How deep must be their gratitude to the Conservative party. You are installing in power to-night, if you pass this Bill, those who hold a policy which I do not support, and with which Liberals and Unionists do not agree. You are putting the power of this country unnecessarily and wrongly into the hands of men many of whom were ruthlessly rejected by their own Labour friends in the great industrial centres of this country at the recent election. I am convinced that a wrong step is being taken, and, for the reasons I have given, I move that this Bill be read a third time this day three months.

Mr. MARSHALL STEVENSrose—

Sir R. COOPER: May not my hon. and Gallant Friend (Brigadier-General Croft) second this Motion, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. SPEAKER: I have called upon the hon. Member for Eccies.

Sir R. COOPER: Is the hon. Member going to second the Motion?

Mr. STEVENS: No.

Mr. SPEAKER: Then I call upon the hon. and gallant Member for Christchurch.

Brigadier-General CROFT: In seconding this Motion I will not intrude upon the patience of the House for a second time this week for more than a few minutes. I believe nay hon. Friend (Sir E. Cooper) is speaking for the vast business community of this country, in which he plays an important part. I want to say a few words in regard to the future of the industries of this country, and the future position of those who oppose nationalisation if this Bill receives its Third Reading to-night. Such control and administration as is indicated in this Bill can only possibly, in my opinion, in the long run lead to nationalisation. I do not think I am exaggerating when I say—I think it is known to many of my hon. Friends— that a considerable number of men high up in the railway world are at this moment of opinion that such is the state of muddle and chaos to which the railway system has
inevitably been reduced during the War owing to Government control—which I admit was necessary—that whether this Bill goes through or not it may be necessary to nationalise the railways. How much more true will that be with the paralytic effect of the super-man of the Coalition always overshadowing the decisions and directions of those in charge of the great railway and transport industries of this country. I believe I am expressing the views of 99 per cent. of the old Liberal and Unionist parties when I say that they held the view, certainly until a few weeks ago, that nationalisation could not be justified until some service had completely and utterly failed. Frankly, I am of opinion that that is true in a good many parts of the country in the case of the canals. There is a public service which has become derelict, and here is a chance for the State to come in and say, "Here is a great public service which has been allowed to become derelict owing to the fact that other rival services faced it in competition." That is a different case from the case of the railways and the remaining transport services embraced in this Bill.
We in this country—and those who have travelled much must be inclined to agree with me—possess the best railways in the world, and the best run railways in the world. I would take off my hat, if I had one, in recognition of the part which the right hon. Gentleman (Sir E. Geddes) took in seeing that the railway system of this country was in such a magnificent position, as undoubtedly it was, until State control came in at the time of the War in order to try to speed up our production, which was necessary owing to our lack of man-power. We have the best roads in the world. You cannot compare the roads of any other country with our main roads. We have, I believe, the best docks in the world. The right hon. Gentleman I see does not agree with me there. At any rate, a great many business men hold that view very strongly. Certainly our modern docks are the best in the world. People come from all over the world to see how they are run and to learn something from them. Therefore, you have no big derelict systems in our transport system. We have the finest transport system in the world, and although we all admit that it is desirable to try to get out of the bog of confusion which has been caused by the War, it is a very different thing from a measure such as this, which
can only have the effect that it will make the men who are concerned in these great services hesitate to launch out, because they will always be afraid of State intervention and advice. The mere fact of carrying this Bill, if it is unhappily carried this evening, will be that everyone who is connected with these industries will be looking to future nationalisation. You will have uncertainty, and you will have killed the spirit among these men concerned in these great businesses.
My hon. and gallant Friend (Major-General Sir Hunter-Weston), who played such a gallant part in the War, has delivered an interesting speech, in which he paid a well-deserved tribute to the right hon. Gentleman on the work on the communications in France, but the hon. and gallant Gentleman was talking in parables. I could not understand the connection between what he was saying in regard to the right hon. Gentleman's great constructive work in France and the position in this country. In France, you had for the purposes of the Army in the field practically no railway system. You were competing with a railway system which was deliberately developed for war purposes by the enemy, and you had suddenly to feed and supply with munitions and everything else a vast Army compressed into a comparatively small space. You cannot really make any comparison between the position in France along the Somme and the position in this country, where our great public services are the greatest in the world. The right hon. Gentleman, in completing his speech, told us that if this Bill is carried he did not think we should have to have nationalisation. I think his last words as he sat down were, "Not now." I asked the right hon. Gentleman the other night whether the Secretary of State for War when he made that speech at Dundee was speaking on behalf of the Government. I also asked the Home Secretary. I see them sitting there like heavenly twins. They were silent on that occasion. Neither could give me an answer. The Minister-designate said that I must ask that question of the Secretary for War himself. I am putting this question not to the right hon. Gentleman but to the House: Is it right that the principle lieutenant, at any rate as regards speech, of the Prime Minister should have gone to Dundee at
the time of the election and deliberately said that, if the Coalition candidate were returned there, they were going to nationalise the railways? Is it conceive able that he had not previously consulted the Prime Minister? We have heard this evening, at any rate, something about rumours. There is no doubt that the Labour party believed at the election that it was the policy of the Government to nationalise railways and mines, and I am told that when the Prime Minister went up to speak at Newcastle the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby boarded the train—I think it was at Derby Station—and the whole attitude of the Labour party appeared to be greatly encouraged after that railway journey, and it is an interesting fact that you had the speech of the Secretary for War coming so soon after that. I believe that this Bill has been forced upon the Government simply because the principal members of the Government came to the conclusion that it was desirable to interfere with that most complex question of wages. From the very moment that the Government took a hand in deciding what wages should or should not be paid in this country all sorts of measures became necessary, and this Bill is one of them.
The chief motive of the right hon. Gentleman in bringing forward this Bill and the reason why a great many people support him is simply owing to the fact that the Government had to step in. The cost of labour on the railways was, in future, going to be very much dearer, and from that moment you had got to do something very drastic if you were going to work any railway system at all. That is all the result of this policy of interference in matters which could have been settled, even though we might have had temporary inconvenience, between masters and men in these great industries. I do hope that the right hon. Gentleman who introduced this Bill will realise that if he attempts to do more than advise and give counsel and endeavour to help, and if he endeavours to grasp those powers which he is supposed to desire to hold over all the industries of this country, and I am not sure of the world as well, he will be in danger, not only of breaking the great party which supports him, but of breaking the whole industrial position of this country. The one thing for which we are suffering at the present moment is that no one in industry knows from one day to the other what is the policy of the Government. They are
plunging into this without any considered plan. The right hon. Gentleman could not say at the present moment whether he is going to ask for a hundred million pounds or a thousand million pounds. He says, "Give me the powers I want and I can settle on these things in a moment." It would have been quite sufficient for the Government to continue the control existing at the present moment with the definite statement to the railways that, if they could help it, nationalisation would never come into force. From that moment you would have got back the individual spirit which has built up the industries of this country, if the Government had continued that control and shown that ii was their wish to have it only a temporary one in order to limit unnecessary competition. But the right hon. Gentleman is asking for far greater powers. I agree with the Mover of the rejection of the Bill that nothing has changed in the character of the Bill from what it was when the Second Heading was passed, and that there arc people who still want the right hon. Gentleman to exercise the powers of nationalisation which the Secretary of State for War, who is known to be, along with himself, the most dominating personality of the Government, has admittedly declared to be the policy of the Government.

Mr. CLYNES: I have listened with the greatest sympathy to the speech of the hon. Baronet (Sir E. Cooper) who moved the rejection of this Bill, and as he directed his observations so much to the Labour Members, with whom I act on these benches, I would like briefly to state our attitude towards this matter. I speak of sympathy because I can assure the hon. Baronet that he is swimming against the tide. It does not appear that the War has left any impression on him. All the events of the last five years have left him unmoved and all the conditions of the ownership of property and of land in this country should, according to his judgment, remain completely unchanged in spite of all that has occurred. He seems to interpret reconstruction as leaving things exactly alone. He does not appear to think that any pledge was given in the course of the last election which required the Government to touch any of the great public services. I understand the hon. Baronet to say that he believes in co-ordination, in control, but he does not believe in bureaucracy. He does not believe in a State De-
partment having any right of interference whatever with any of the public services. How we are to have co-ordinated control and at the same time leave such things as railways alone is a matter which is beyond my understanding. The hon. Baronet may, therefore, as he does, turn with some little hope and promise to another land where it now appears that some coal has been discovered. We should like to retain his presence in this House, but if he decides that such startling processes as this tendency towards nationalisation should compel him to leave it, then I suppose he will find much more comfort by emigrating to Holland than by remaining in this land in which, after all, I understand, he has not done so badly.
Turn to another country not far from Holland—Germany. It must be admitted that before the War, leaving aside all the terrible tendency to wrongdoing which possessed the mind of those who governed affairs in Germany, no one would question the immense efficiency of the German nation in matters of trade and business. The centre and kernel of that efficiency was an almost perfect railway system, a State railway system. Not only were the railways efficiently managed as handmaidens for the development and protection of her trade, but her railways were a source of very great value. The profits of the German railway system went, not into the pockets of private owners, but to relieve the burden of taxation pressing on the shoulders of the people. The railways fed and developed the industries and trade of Germany and did not, as has often been alleged in this country, hamper and hinder them by excessive rates, and by want of sympathy with trade and commerce. What was it enabled Germany in the first few days of the War swiftly to move her troops East and West? It was the efficient and perfect condition of her railway system. So judged by the test of experience it cannot be said that in a country even larger than our own State ownership and control of this great means of transport has turned out to be a failure. On the main argument of the hon. and gallant Gentleman who seconded the Amendment, I can only make this out of it, that it is a right and proper thing for the Government to come to the rescue of failures, but it is a wrong thing for the Government to touch anything which is likely to be a success. He says that the Government could nationalise the canals because they are poor. It is a thing
in which private enterprise has done badly and it can be properly taken up by the State. Really are we in such a condition as to be expected to treat seriously an argument which maintains that the State is to act for the benefit of a private estate, and yet reject any proposal in which the State is to avail of an instrument for the services of the people?
I listened with the greatest pleasure to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman in submitting this Bill to the House this afternoon, and I would like first to say a word on what I regard as his theory in reference to councils consisting of persons drawn from outside for consultative and advisory purposes. I thought that he was dealing with some fear, a fear in the minds of other men, when he referred to this matter. I have had but a short experience of responsibility in any State Department, but I take leave to say, on the basis of that short experience, that a State Department will find it very beneficial and helpful indeed to open their doors widely to the approaches of persons of competence and experience outside who have knowledge of what they are doing. It not infrequently happens, as the House will know, that men are put at the head of State Departments who have not had any long experience personally of the work to be done in the position in which they may be placed. We established, for instance, under the Food Ministry, a Food Consumers' Council. I can assure the House that that body has been no mere figurehead. It has not been a mere nominal adviser. It has been an effective participant in the administration of the Food Ministry. Its individual members became attached to separate and definite parts of the Ministry, pursuing inquiries, finding out reasons why this, that, or the other thing had to be done, and then collectively acting as a council for the purpose of giving advice at each meeting to those responsible to the country and to Parliament. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that the participation in that way of outside advisers, themselves brought in to feel and to share responsibility has not in any way diminished the ultimate responsibility to this House of Ministers of a particular Department.

Sir E. GEDDES: I wish to make my position on this quite clear. I think that outside consultation with people of outside experience is most valuable, and a Minister who did not encourage it and
make use of it would be unwise indeed. What I think is not a good thing is to set up round a Minister statutory councils which he has to consult, and who can veto any action he wishes to take, and without whose approval he can do nothing. What I strongly support is consultation with outsiders.

Mr. CLYNES: I am much obliged to-the right hon. Gentleman for his statement, and I share in very large measure the conclusion which he has reached. All I am arguing for is that it would be a good thing in our several State Departments, as well as in the Ministry of Food, in his own Department, in the Ministry of Health, and the other great State Departments, that as far as possible we should through the agency of consultation and recommendation use those vast resources of outside experience which are available. I am hopeful that our different Departments will through that means become less bureaucratic and become more responsive to the needs of the people than perhaps they have been up to the present. We regard this Bill not as an instalment of nationalisation but as no more than a genuine and businesslike attempt to reduce confusion to system, and to make through the agency of State supervision and directorship the best out of our means of transit in this country. From the Second Reading speeches, and many other deliverances a case has been clearly made out for a Bill of this kind, and indeed the-case is derived from the experience especially that which we had during the-War, and out of the experience of individual travellers. The Mover and Seconder of this Amendment have taunted hon. Gentlemen of their own parties with having deserted more or less their political and economic principles. My commentary on that is that a stage can be reached where you have to choose between party ties and what axe called political principles and the needs of the nation. This Bill may say, as I hope it does, that certain private interests must subordinate to the public welfare. The whole tendency of our legislation and the direction in which the public mind is travelling is the direction of using the great public services more for the public needs than for the making of private profit. We are travelling, therefore, towards public ownership. Extreme as we may be held in this House to be, and moderate as our own friends may charge us with being, as they frequently do outside, the fact remains that those
principles for which we stand secured more than 2,250,000 votes at the election. That represents a considerable body of public opinion, and we believe it is a body of opinion greatly on the increase.
So that whilst we offer our congratulations to the right hon. Gentleman for the manner in which he has conducted this measure, drawing, as he does, on a great reservoir of personal experience, yet we think that the right hon. Gentleman should not have yeilded so much as he has done in Committee and other stages to those who have pressed on him the need for thinning down this measure. These are not those robust proposals which the public expected, following the hopes that were raised by the public pronouncements and Ministerial declarations prior to the election last year. The House well knows that there is very great unrest, and that there is great disturbance in the public mind, and all those things that we call reconstruction, the rebuilding of Britain, the reshaping of our internal economic conditions, are not to come to us and are not dependent on mere phrases. They will have to come to us by State action. It will be deeds, and not words, that will prove the reality of the promises that were put responsibly before the electors prior to the last election. Our view on this matter is this, that there has been, and that there is now, too big a difference between a comparatively small section of the community enjoying a state of affluence and a state of security, and a large section of the country almost entirely near the line of subsistence, and removed beyond hope from the security and comforts which others enjoy. We trace that condition not to individual unfitness but to lack of individual opportunity. If it be true that this is a country for which all had a right to fight, it must be true that this is a country in which all have the right to an equal chance, and there can be no equality of opportunity so long as those vast properties, made what they are because of the needs of the nation and because we must all use them, are the private possession of a comparatively small number of people in the country. Out of those great properties, like railways and like mines, waterways and harbours, immense incomes are derived from the more act of ownership, and not because those who enjoy those incomes give any great contribution to increasing the value or to in any way improving the usefulness of those particular things.
There is too great a yield to capital which is idle, and too small a yield for labour which is working. I do not mean that most capitalists do not work. They give the contribution of their personal ability, and when we talk of labour we mean the labour of the brain as well as of the hand, and the brainworker should be well paid for his services. But millions every year flow into the pockets of persons who give no contribution whatever to the State and who do nothing to add in the slightest degree to the value of those great public properties. There is a dangerous disparity between the affluence of a small section in the country and the impoverished condition of a large section, and until you diminish that and bring the poorer people somewhat nearer to the point of the rich, you will deepen and make even more troublesome this condition of unrest and this condition of disturbed minds which prevents trade and business being conducted on the lines we all desire. I would appeal to hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who, while the War was on, asked the poor man to give as much as the rich could give—his life; and that is the utmost that man can give— that the rights of the poor man to a better chance in this country should be recognised. That will exhibit a truer spirit of real patriotism than sticking closely to doctrines which time should wear away. We could talk freely about those doctrines before the War, but the War should have been a great purifying and cleansing influence, and for those millions of poor men who volunteered—and 5,000,000 of them volunteered before the Conscription Act was passed in this House to fight for and save their country—we claim that they are entitled, having won the victory for their land, to find in their land a more secure and comfortable and assured place than they were able to do before the War. If those views are not more fully accepted by the class, whom I may call without offence the favoured and wealthy class, and are not more readily accepted by them, then I say that that class must expect more trouble and more of the disturbed mind. You cannot repel ideals, and you cannot remove the sense of deep wrong from which the working class are now suffering by appeals to what private capitalists have been able to do for their country and for the State he the past.
For those reasons we welcome this Bill as a step, if not in the direction of owner
ship, at least in the direction of State authority, supervision, and control over agencies which in the main are the immediate needs of the trades and businesses of this country. The War should have proved, and I am sure it did to most men, the failure of developing to perfection anything like system in our railway service. On the whole the railways were run, as were other means of transit, primarily to make profit for the shareholders. I agree that in the main the individual patron of those services was catered for in comforts which were thought of and provided at very great expense. But railway directors never yielded to the claims of the railway servants until by force of organisation they were compelled to do so. More than 100,000 men were working for the railways of Britain in the year 1911–12 in this country for less than £l per week. Can it be said that a service is a great national success if it does not give its men ampler rewards and fairer remuneration than this service gave to the workmen before the War? This Bill is a thin instalment of what is expected, but really we should at election time tell the public we are opposed to all this work of reconstruction unless we are prepared, when these Bills come forward, to support them, and to range ourselves behind the Government when we see them to be right. There can be no reconstruction without a fundamental alteration in our public services and in our supplies of the needs of the nation, and you cannot have social reform and reconstruction by leaving things alone. The meaning of the Amendment is that nothing whatever should be done, and that there ought to be no State interference at all with the services covered by this measure. For that reason we will resist the Amendment in the Lobby to-night.

7.0 P.M.

Sir F. FLANNERY: There was one observation in the speech of my right hon. Friend who has just sat down with which the whole of the House will heartily agree. That was his appreciation of the lucid and comprehensive statement made by the right hon. Gentleman the Minister-designate. The whole aspect of the Bill in its relation to transport, and the whole value that the right hon. Gentleman has in his mind as to the administration and organisation under that Bill, was made quite clear to the House by the statement which he gave; and in that respect, if in
no other, I am sure the House as a whole will heartily agree with the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken. The hon. Baronet (Sir R. Cooper) who moved the rejection of this Bill disclosed as diametrically opposite a set of opinions to those of my right hon. Friend (Mr. Clynes) as could possibly be heard in this House. I am sorry to say that the hon. Baronet did not, as it seems to me, make a very logical position for himself. He stated that the Government, at the time of the General Election, were pledged to reform transport. He also stated that the present system of transport was uneconomical and was grossly wasteful. He went on to say that he and the rest of his party were in favour of the unification of transport, and he then found fault with this Bill because under it the Minister would have full responsibility for that, for finance, and for the details. The House was curious to know, after the hon. Baronet had admitted the necessity for co-ordination of transport and had admitted the pledge of the Government to carry out reforms in transport, what was his alternative by which those pledges could be met. What was his alternative? A Minister without power; a Ministry without responsibility; a Minister who could do nothing but think for two years, and at the end of two years give advice to the country. Anything more futile, anything, if I may say so without offence, more illogical and ineffective I have not heard in the course of over twenty years' experience in this House.

Sir R. COOPER: If the hon. Baronet will excuse me, I never said anything of the kind. My suggestion was, as we were committed to continue the control of the railways, and I believe we have to continue that for a long time, that whilst the right hon. Gentleman is doing that for two years he could ascertain facts and figures and think out a policy for the whole transport system.

Sir F. FLANNERY: That is just what I said. A Minister without power, a Minister without authority—a paralysed, impotent Minister—was to think, and then, afterwards, he would advise at the end of two years. Nothing but prejudice and misunderstanding and lack of logic could, as it seems to me, explain the position, not of my hon. Friend, but of anyone who associates with him in regard to this Bill. The pledge that was given by
the Prime Minister was a definite pledge of the widest possible character in regard to transport. It was to be transport for all purposes—manufacture or commerce and for agriculture. No section of the industry of the country requires that assistance and improvement more than agriculture.
The Bill is still a comprehensive Bill. It has sustained at the hands of the Committee, and at the hands of the House on the Report stage, about as much alteration as, I think, anyone, even the most experienced in this House, can remember any Bill to have sustained and yet to have survived. It was eighteen days before a laborious Committee including some of the most experienced business men and some of the most acute intellects in the House. It has been considered with a critical acumen and attention to detail which have made it, not, perhaps, a perfect Bill, but as thoroughly. practical a working Bill as this House has ever sent to another place for the purpose of consideration and improvement. May I re mind the House of some of the very great changes which have been made? Those changes are over twenty in number, and I shall not refer to even a large proportion of them. I think it was the hon. Baronet who moved this Motion who said that the idea of the Bill as it was introduced was that the Minister should be a super-man, with power to do anything at any time he liked, at any cost to the State that he liked. One of the most important and most effective changes made in this Bill was made upstairs, when there were added to the consultations of the Minister, not only an Advisory Committee, but a panel of experts—and this is the point—selected by the various interests, including Labour, that would be concerned in the operations of the new Ministry. There was a change of the most important character, but there has been safeguarded not only the various interests affected in the development of transport, but, and this is the essence of the whole Bill, the control by way of co-ordination and the holding together with various links of the system of transport, which must be as completely and as necessarily in the hands of one man as the helm of the steersman must be in the hands of one man if the ship is to be saved from disaster. That was, perhaps, the largest and best improvement made in the Bill.
Then, parties aggrieved—and there were many representing traders, and the hon. Member for Eccles (Mr. Holt), who stood up for the interests of traders so manfully, will remember that—parties aggrieved now have, under the alterations, a right of appeal against each other through the Ministry, and a further safeguard has been introduced to protect the interests of traders as well as of the docks and harbours over which they trade. There was one thing which the Committee and the House refused to do, and that was to break the control of the Ministry in the continuity of the management of the system of transport. Electricity, which I believe will play one of the largest parts in future improvements, was removed from the Bill. As the House well knows, there is to be an entirely separate Bill for that, which will be considered and dealt with, although I hope that ultimately the plan of the Ministry of having a large control over the supply of electricity will be continued. Again, a separate section for roads did not exist in the Bill in the first instance, but it has been introduced. Tramways belonging to local authorities are to be entirely freed from interference by the Ministry, and the appointments of the staff are to be controlled by a separate authority. The Minister—and here is the point which my hon. Friend who moved the Motion did not appear to have understood—is to be personally responsible to anyone aggrieved, and may be sued or may sue by ordinary action at law, thus removing the difficulty, as anyone who has had any experience in law proceedings can understand. of procedure by Petition of Right. I think I am correct in saying that this is the first time that a Minister of the Crown has been placed in that position in regard to the citizens who are His Majesty's subjects. That is a step which is right and proper as simplifying the complaint of anyone who considers himself aggrieved.
Then, as regards employés. These, under any undertakings, must be provided for on fair and equitable terms, in regard to money during their employment and in regard to superannuation after their retirement. That, I think, was a provision not in the Bill as originally introduced, but it is now in it in the form in which the House is asked to pass the Third Reading. The hon. Baronet referred to wagons, and to the large sum of money necessary to purchase them if they are all to be purchased. The management of the wagons, as the Minister-designate has so clearly
shown, is of the utmost importance in regard to this reform of co-ordination of transport, and the £70,000,000, which is estimated to be necessary if the wagons are all purchased, have been, arranged for by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, after some criticism, in a way which ought to be entirely satisfactory to the country and even to the vendors. That is to say, that the money shall be paid, not in cash, but in Government securities, thus increasing the subscriptions to the Victory Loan which is so necessary a step in patriotism to secure the reinstatement of our trade. I was very glad indeed to hear the statement of the Minister-designate as to the coastal trade by sea. One of the attacks made upon him in this House has been that he, as a railwayman, would be prejudiced in favour of railways and would do all he could to give tirade to railways and to starve the coastwise trade by ships. I think he has completely disposed of that idea in his speech to-day. He has shown how very much more economical in the way of cost transport trade per ton coastwise services is; although it is slower, it is more economical and less costly than railway transport. I am sure the House, and even those traders and shipowners who have been in. fear and trembling on this matter, will have been thoroughly convinced by his statement that justice will be done and the balance held evenly by him and his Ministry between land transport and transport coastwise by sea.
What is the basis of this suggestion that the Bill should be rejected? It was in some degree reflected by that dissertation upon nationalisation which my right hon. Friend who spoke last made to the House. I thought he travelled very far away from the practical issue that is before the House. Let me recall the House to the real practical question before it, as distinguished from the Socialistic ethics of my right hon. Friend. This Bill—and here I know I shall not have the sympathy of hon. Gentlemen on the benches behind me—this Bill is in my humble judgment a barrier against nationalisation. Supposing that there were no Bill with the provisions contained in this Bill. What would happen? The continued congestion and stagnation of all the traffic in the docks— Liverpool, London, Glasgow, Hull, and everywhere else—the railways choked and unable to compete with the demands upon them, traders, shipowners, travellers, workers, everybody dissatisfied, every-
body badly served, as they are to-day, through lack of co-ordination and of system throughout the transport service. The argument of hon. Gentlemen would have redoubled and trebled force in favour of making this change. The only way, they would say, to make it is to nationalise. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO!"] What is nationalisation but management, possession uncontrolled, and ownership? Ownership is essential to nationalisation. There is no ownership, even as regards the moving of rolling stock and wagons, in this Bill from one end to the other. If the Bill be passed, it will remove that argument, which hon. Gentlemen would so gladly use, of confusion and disaster in our transport system, and my right hon. Friend, I hope, in his Ministry, will be able to show that without nationalisation, but with well-organised management, be it under the State or otherwise, these difficulties can be removed, and a practically perfect system of transport by land and by sea can be established, which would do more than almost any other reform for our reconstruction and the re-establishment of our trade. That is the belief, at all events, which I hold. We shall have order out of chaos in transport by the passing of this Bill. Transport will be coordinated by road, by rail, and by water. The country and all the people concerned will be benefited by the working that this Bill will set ftp. Therefore I have the utmost confidence and belief that the House, even to its oldest Tory Member, will give its adhesion to this Bill, in the full confidence that it is for the benefit of the people at large, and makes no step towards that social danger which many of us believe would be disastrous for the country, and which we hope will be made no nearer by the passage into law of one of the best and most practical Bills included in the comprehensive programme which every man in this House was more or less returned by his constituents to carry out.

Mr. STEVENS: No Member of this House can be more anxious than myself upon the question of nationalisation, but surely, if we can accept any statement in this House, we must for the purposes of this Bill—and I say only for the purposes of this Bill—accept the statement of the Leader of the House that neither he nor the Government nor the individual heads of the Government are committed to nationalisation, nor that this Bill is in
any degree from his point of view going towards it. In quoting the Leader of the House I am quoting, as I believe, the greatest asset of his party. I take his word upon that, and say no more upon the question of nationalisation in regard to this Bill. Following the progress of the Bill from its introduction until the Third Reading to-day, and looking at it entirely from the point of view of the -trader—who after all is the greatest vested interest concerned—the trader's great concern is, and has been, that he has had no opportunity, either by himself or through his experts, to give very considered and detailed opinions upon this very important question of transport. That remains his complaint to-day, and I am sure most of the contentious matter that we have to deal with in the progress of this Bill has been due to the fact that the traders' interests were never consulted by the Government before the Bill was brought about. The traders desire co-ordination as much as anyone could possibly desire it. They do not object to Government control. They never have objected to control in that sense.
I said I would not refer to nationalisation again, but until we have some know-ledge of what is meant by nationalisation it is ridiculous that we should consider nationalisation in regard to this or any other matter. The great difference between the traders and the scheme as put forward so ably by the right hon. Gentleman this afternoon is, to the general hearer, comparatively small. As a matter of fact, I can almost agree with every word the right hon. Gentleman uttered this afternoon, and could put his statement forward as the case of the traders of the country for co-ordination and control. But this country has suffered for two generations from the fact that the transport system of this country has been ruled by the railway interest. The result has been that our railway rates are twice, or nearly twice, as much—I am speaking of general merchandise, for there one must discriminate; our mineral rates are not, comparatively speaking, so high; our passenger rates are not so high; but our general merchandise rates are the highest in the world, without exception, and it is all due to the dominating influence of the railway companies over all forms of transport in this country. That is almost the only remaining difference between the Bill as the traders would like it and as it is
now passing through this House to another place on its Third Reading. When the Home Secretary introduced the Bill it came as a great surprise that it was intended, not only to co-ordinate the control, but to "take possession of." Most of us have heard over and over again that the words "take possession of" in this Bill do not express what they are meant to convey. I am glad to see the Leader of the House here now, because I would like to remind him that he suggested that we should find other words. We did find other words, and I want to make an appeal that, when the Bill is in another place, those other words, or some similar other words, may be found. I can assure him and assure the House—most hon. Members know it already—that that little change from "taking possession of"— which is not intended in the sense of ownership at all—to some other words, will make an exceedingly great difference in the manner in which this measure is received in the country. The great fear is as to the taking possession of our docks, harbours, railways, canals, and other undertakings like the Manchester Ship Canal—and I name that because it is named specially in the Bill, in order to impress upon the Leader of the House how these matters are looked upon by people in the country who have not the advantages that we have of realising that the words actually are. The Manchester Ship Canal is a monument of private enterprise, the pride of its founders— its 40,000 shareholders who found the money for its construction—and, indeed, the pride of the whole district it serves, whether as canal, as harbour, as port (the third port in the country), as a statutory railway company. There is not a man in the whole of that district who would not resent the fact that that undertaking was taken possession of in the real sense of the word by a Government under any Bill. And here I want to assist, if I can, the right hon. Gentleman with the Bill. I am not quite certain, and I only mention it now as it is the only opportunity, whether, under the Bill as it now comes here, this railway is to go forward to the Ministry. I should say that I and those who are with me think that all railways should be controlled by the Ministry. Amongst the railways which are not under the Executive Committee yet are the railways of the Manchester Ship Canal Company, the railways of the Port of London Authority, the Trafford Park Company's railways,
and a few other lines. The reason for their non-inclusion at the outset of the War was that the Railway Executive were told, and told by those of us who were interested in some of those railways, that if those railways were included representatives of them should be put upon the Railway Executive; and I believe the only-reason why they were not at the time included was the fear, on the part of that paramount railway interest which I have spoken of, lest the traders' railway interests should be included. There still remains a good deal of the autocrat in this measure. Government promises, I am sorry to say, have not been fulfilled. Let me refer to what the Home Secretary said upon the introduction of this Bill. He said:
The Government propose to set up a Ministry to maintain for two years, during which the receipts are guaranteed, the whole of the control which they had during the course of the War, and at the same time to give them power during these two years to consider the whole question—to consider it with the assistance of the Committee of this House which is still in existence—[Several Hon. Members: 'No, no; a new Parliament!'] Well you can set it up again—at the same time to make such changes as and when they think it desirable." 
That, I think, is a distinct Government promise. 'That Select Committee should be set up again forthwith. I am sure that the value of the assistance it would give to this Ministry is not appreciated by the House or by the Government, or else the Committee would have been reappointed. The Home Secretary said such a Committee would help the Ministry. I would add that it would also remove apprehension that the domination of the railway companies over transport was in any way intended.
There is an apparent paradox in the figures we have heard as to the loss on the railways, which is now brought down to £60,000,000, as against £100,000,000. In every other country, what may be described as railway services proper, are charged for separately. Our system is, and has been, to make the rate inclusive of every other service that could be included in it. A "C" and "D" rate includes conveyance by rail, terminals, and subsidiary services, such as warehousing, cartage, etc. These other subsidiary services have increased in cost so much that in the "C" and "D" rate there is nothing like a sufficient amount allowed for them. Cartage, for instance, which in the rate is allowed for at 1s. 4d. per ton
is now costing the railways 5s. per ton. Under this new co-ordination of transport let each service be properly charged for, and charged for so that the work can be done at a profit. Then all the other means of communication would come in on competitive terms; coastwise traffic would fall back into its ordinary place, and road motor traffic too. I will take one particular trade in the Manchester district, where 150,000 tons of goods have been carried into Manchester annually, all of it coming from places within twenty miles of the city, and all of it carried at an average rate of about 8s. 6d. per ton. That 8s. 6d. per ton includes the railway conveyance, the two railway termini, loading and discharging, station accommodation and the two cartages. The two cartages are costing the railway company—or the Government—a great deal more than is obtained for the whole of the different services. If these rates were sub-divided and the conveyance charge kept by itself, not a single ton of that 150,000 tons would go on the railway proper; it would all go where it ought to go, on to the roads. The same-arguments apply to the different coastwise services. They are all starved on that account. I estimate that on a most conservative basis £100.000 per day at least is being wasted by the Government upon that one item, that is to say, through allowing the railway companies to accept traffic at less than the cost of cartage.
Those of us who have had long experience in the working of transport know that if it is to succeed on its administrative side the fact must be recognised that transport is the servant of trade and not its master. Much has been said as to the personality of the Minister-designate. May I say that I have formed a very high opinion of him, and I have seen a good deal of him lately. My fear is that he is not yet powerful enough to throw off railway influence; in fact, the appointments he is making lead one to think that he relies on it. If we are mistaken, we shall know from his actions. Let him prove himself strong enough to make his Department acknowledge that transport is the servant of trade and not its master. He may then reckon on the powerful assistance of the great trading industry of the country.

Dr. D. MURRAY: I should like to divert the thoughts of hon. Members from the close atmosphere of railway carriages to
the fresh breezes of the sea coast. I rise to support this Bill. I must say that the doleful Jeremiad to which the Mover of the Amendment treated us leaves me cold. I believe that the Bill will make for the welfare of the country as a whole. It is because I believe that that I do not join with the hon. Gentlemen who think that the right hon. Gentleman takes too much power in this Bill. What I complain of is that he is not taking enough power to deal with the transport services of the country. He is dealing with the transport services in areas of the country where really they simply require artistic touches here and there to make them complete, and he has absolutely forgotten large sections of the area of the country, and especially of Scotland, and those who depend upon the sea for their means of transport. This Bill is essentially a part of what is generally called the policy of Reconstruction, that same policy which is meant to make this country a better place to live in for the men who defended us on land and sea. I am not sure that the right hon. Gentleman has not forgotten the men who defended us on the sea, and I think he might have remembered some of his pals at the Admiralty, the men who manned the ships of war and the mine-sweepers, thousands of them from the west coast of Scotland, who depend entirely upon seaborne traffic. I cannot regard this as a full national measure of transportation until the right hon. Gentleman takes control of the steamer traffic of some parts of the country.
I think I can claim the support of the Leader of the National Party in asking the right hon. Gentleman to take up what is practically a derelict service on the west coast of Scotland. Private enterprise has absolutely failed to meet, not the perfect, nor even the average, but the ordinary requirements of civilisation as regards transport on the west coast of Scotland, and particularly in the islands of Scotland, and I hope I shall not be considered too parochial if I draw the attention of the House to the character of these services. Thousands of the men of the western islands of Scotland were in the Navy on the first day of the War, and thousands of them have also been in the Army, and I think the right hon. Gentleman might have remembered to bring these men and their interests within the ambit of his Bill. The railway service of the country does not affect these people very much, and
there have been many occasions during the past year when in many parts of the West Coast of Scotland, and particularly in the islands, the people were short of food and the cattle were short of water, simply because of the complete breakdown of the transport services in those parts. I will not weary the House by reading many of the letters or telegrams I have had, but I will mention one telegram which I had from a gentleman who was once a respected Member of this House, Major Rowland Hunt, from one of these islands, in which he said that they could not get the necessaries of life. That is not an isolated fact, but a picture of the whole situation which has obtained in those parts, especially during the War, and the means of transport since the conclusion of the War have been even worse than during the War. These are the general grounds upon which I claim the sympathy of the right hon. Gentleman.
It should be a national measure, and it should deal with every portion of the population, and I maintain that the requirements of those who arc dependent on the sea services for their means of transport deserve as much consideration as those who have the railways at their doors. I have talked of the shortage of food and other supplies, and that is still going on. There is a Committee, I understand, which has been meeting of late, representing all the Departments connected with these matters, but I am not aware that they have come to any conclusion yet that has, at any rate, brought any good to these communities. We have heard that the railway has killed coastal traffic in Scotland, but there is one aspect of that question which the right hon. Gentleman did not emphasise, and that was that those who were dependent upon the coastal traffic during these years have had to pay from 300 to 500 per cent. increased rates, whereas the mainland, who were supplied by the railways, had no increased rates at all for goods, and the nation even subsidised them. One consequence was that in these islands, where besides the fishing trade there is a large industry in stock, when the farmers and crofters brought their stock to the mainland they had to pay about three times as much as they had before the War and had to compete with farmers and crofters on the mainland, who had only to pay the pre-war rates, and I think that is a matter which shows considerable unfairness. I do not blame the right hon. Gentleman
or even the Government for that, but I think it is a matter which ought to be put right. The passenger traffic on the West Coast needs attention, and I think in this connection the right hon. Gentleman can do something. I understand that the Highland Railway Company, for instance, have some power for running steamboats for passenger and goods traffic, and I hope the House of Lords will amend this Bill. I remember an old Radical who used to denounce the House of Lords once said in this House, "Thank God, we have a House of Lords!" and I am inclined to agree with that to-day. Nobody could turn up the OFFICIAL REPORT and say that I ever said anything against the House of Lords. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to make up for this deficiency in the Bill when he sends the Bill to another place. At any rate, I am throwing out an S.O.S. signal to some of the Highland Peers in the other place who are interested in highland reconstruction to see to it that this aspect of the question is not lost sight of. The House has, I dare say, had quite sufficient discussion of this Bill, and I will not say much more, but this is a very serious problem to the population of the West Coast and Western islands of Scotland, the people who, above all others in this country, depend upon seaborne traffic, and I hope the organising genius of the right hon. Gentleman will be applied to the chaotic and collapsed condition of the steamer services on the West Coast of Scotland, and bring them somewhat up to the average level, at any rate, of other services in this country.

Mr. BONAR LAW (Leader of the House): I wonder if it would be convenient to the general feeling of the House if I were to make an appeal now that we might come to a decision. I must not do what my hon. Friend who spoke last did— make first my own speech and then say we have had enough discussion, although I hardly like to sit down without saying a word or two about the Bill.

Dr. MURRAY: Other hon. Members have spoken.

Mr. BONAR LAW: What I said was not intended offensively. There has never been a Bill, in my experience, in which the House as a whole has taken more interest and more thoroughly understands, and I do not believe it is within the wish
of a man at this stage to find any new argument to introduce on the Third Reading stage, at any rate. I do not in the least desire to prevent a Division, but I think we might come to a decision now, and if I may transgress for three minutes—I do not think I will be more—I should like to put one or two points only in regard to the Bill. In the first place, there has been a great deal about nationalisation. I think it is all nonsense. I do not mean that nationalisation is all nonsense, nor that it is all sense; I mean that it has nothing whatever to do with this Bill. There is obviously a problem there of immediate action which has to be faced, and the best proof that I could give that this issue does not arise would be found in the speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the Duncairn Division (Sir E. Carson) on the Second Reading of the Bill, when he said, "I do not like this Bill, but it is quite evident that we must have nationalisation of the railways if we do not have anything else, so let us have this." My right hon. Friend is right in saying that whatever else happens there is really no alternative before the House except trying to take some real control to save the taxpayers' money in the two years during which the Bill has got to run, or to hand it over to the State and try to work it in that way. There is no alternative, so I think we may leave out of our minds the question of nationalisation. The other point I wish to make is this. Whether we like it or not, the Government is bound to run the railways at least for two years. Think what that means. My right hon. Friend put the point quite as clearly as it is possible for me to do it in his speech to-day. During these two years those who are now directing the railways—for they will be interested from the future point of view and from the national point of view, I do not doubt—but from the point of view of the immediate pocket interests of their shareholders it is really against their interests to arrange for any new improvements or increased rolling stock now; that is to say, it is dead against their interests to have new locomotives or new anything else at the present high prices if they can get them within two years.
8.0 P.M.
I ask the House to realise what that means. The transport system of this or any other country is vital to the commercial life of the country. Are we for two years to leave the railways in that
position that those who are running them have no interest whatever—I am talking of pocket interest—in spending money to develop them at this moment and get the best results. We all know how short money is. We all know we must be dead careful about the expenditure of money, but I think this country at this moment is not unlike a big business firm with great assets, but with its capital tied up. What happens then? The directors say they cannot spend money or they will go straight to bankruptcy. If, on the other hand, they can get profitable business, they use whatever credit they can to expand it. That is our position. However short of money we may be, we cannot afford to let a great service, which is run at the expense of the taxpayers, become derelict during the time the taxpayers are running it. I am not by nature very sanguine. I always believe in the saying—which is none the less true because it was that of a Hun— "Nature has so arranged that the trees do not grow up into the sky." No miracle is going to happen, but there is room for really effective work being done, and I do not think any Bill has ever gone through this House which has been more carefully examined. I am convinced that, if it is got going quickly, we shall get real advantage to this country by carrying this Bill through and fulfilling the pledges which we made at the election. I am not going to dwell upon them, but I do speak as a Member and leader of a party which, at the time of the election,

was accused of saying all these things without meaning them. That is not true. We do mean them. We do mean to carry out our pledges, and I am perfectly certain any objection or criticism which has been made against this Bill has not been from the point of view of private interest but from the point of view of efficiency. We must try it, and I am convinced the trial will justify us in the end.

Sir R. COOPER: I would be quite willing to withdraw this Amendment if my right hon. Friend could give an assurance to this House that nationalisation will not be introduced into any public service during the two years.

Mr. BONAR LAW: What on earth has that to do with it?

Sir R. COOPER: That is my objection to the Bill.

Mr. BONAR LAW: I do not in the least object to my hon. Friend going to a Division. I should rather like it. All that I am doing—and it is, perhaps, rather mean of me, after making this speech—is to suggest to the House that, as we have had a very full discussion, we might now have the Division.

Question put,
That the word ' now ' stand part of the Question.

The House divided: Ayes, 245; Noes, none.

Division No. 67.]
AYES.
[8.5 p.m.


Adair, Rear-Admiral
Buchanan, Lieut.-Col. A. L. H.
Davies, T. (Cirencester)


Adamson, Rt. Hon. William
Bull, Rt. Hon. Sir William James
Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)


Addison, Rt. Hon. Dr. Christopher
Burn, Colonel C. R. (Torquay)
Denison-Pender, John C.


Ainsworth, Capt. C.
Butcher, Sir J. G.
Dockrell, Sir M.


Armitage, Robert
Campbell, J. G. D.
Doyle, N. Grattan


Arnold, Sydney
Carlile, Sir Edward Hildred
Du Pre, Colonel W. B.


Atkey, A. R.
Carr, W. T.
Edge, Captain William


Baird, John Lawrence
Carter, w. (Mansfield)
Edwards, A. Clement (East Ham. s.)


Baldwin, Stanley
Casey, T. w.
Edwards, C. (Bedwelty)


Balfour, Sir Robert (Partick)
Cecil, Rt. Hon. Lord R. (Hitchin)
Edwards, Major J. (Aberavon)


Barnes, Major K. (Newcastle, E.)
Chadwick, R. Burton
Entwistle, Major C. F.


Barnston, Major Harry
Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Birm., W.)
Eyres-Monsell, Commander


Barrand, A. R.
Chamberlain, N. (Birm., Lady wood)
Falle, Major Sir Bertram Godfray


Beckett, Hon. Gervase
Cheyne, Sir William Watson
FitzRoy, Capt. Hon. Edward A.


Benn, Sir Arthur S. (Plymouth)
Clynes, Rt. Hon. J. R.
Flannery, Sir J. Fortescue


Bigland, Alfred
Coates, Major Sir Edward F.
Forestier-Walker, L.


Birchall, Major J. D.
Cobb, Sir Cyril
Foxcroft, Captain C.


Blades, Sir George R.
Colfox, Major W. p.
France, Gerald Ashburner


Blair, Major Reginald
Conway, Sir W. Martin
Fraser, Major Sir Keith


Boles, Lieut.-Col. D. F.
Coote, Colin R. (Isle of Ely)
Galbraith, Samuel


Bowerman, Rt. Hon. C. W.
Cory, Sir Clifford John (St. Ives)
Ganzoni, Captain F. C.


Bowyer, Capt. G. W. E.
Cowan, D. M. (Scottish Univ.)
Geddes, Rt. Hon. Sir A. C. (Basingstoke)


Boyd-Carpenter, Major A.
Cowan, Sir H, (Aberdeen and Kinc.)
Geddes, Rt. Hon. Sir E. (Cambridge)


Brackenbury, Col. H. L.
Craig, Col. Sir James (Down, Mid)
Gibbs, Colonel George Abraham


Breese, Major C. E.
Craik, Right Hon. Sir Henry
Gilbert, James Daniel


Bridgeman, William Clive
Dalziel, Sir Davison (Brixton)
Gilmour, Lieut.-Colonel John


Briggs, Harold
Dalziel, Rt. Hon. Sir J. H. (Kirk'dy)
Graham, W. (Edinburgh)


Brittain, Sir Harry E.
Davidson, Major-Gen. Sir John H.
Gray, Major E.


Broad, Thomas Tucker
Davies, Major David (Montgomery Co.)
Greame, Major P. Lloyd-


Green, A. (Derby)
Maclean, Rt. Hon. Sir D. (Midlothian)
Short, A. (Wednesbury)


Green, J. F. (Leicester)
Macquisten, F. A.
Shortt, Rt. Hon. E. (N'castle-on-T., W)


Greenwood, Col. Sir Hamar
Mallalieu, Frederick William
Smith, Capt. A. (Nelson and Colne)


Gregory, Holman
Malone, Major P. (Tottenham, S.)
Smith, Harold (Warrington)


Griffiths, T. (Pontypool)
Mason, Robert
Spencer, George A.


Guest, J. (Hemsworth, York)
Meysey-Thompson, Lt.-Col. E. C.
Spoor, B. G.


Guest, Maj. Hon. O. (Leic, Loughboro')
Mitchell, William Lane-
Stanley, Colonel Hon. G. F. (Preston)


Guinness, Capt. Hon. R. (Southend)
Molson, Major John Elsdale
Stephenson, Colonel H. K.


Hacking, Captain D. H.
Montagu, Rt. Hon. E. S.
Stevens, Marshall


Hallwood, A.
Moreing, Captain Algernon H.
Stewart, Gershom


Hall, Lieut.-Col. Sir Fred, (Dulwich)
Morgan, Major D. Watts
Sturrock, J. Long-


Hallas, E.
Morison, T. B. (Inverness)
Sugden, W. H.


Hancock, John George
Mosley, Oswald
Sutherland, Sir William


Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Luton, Beds.)
Murray, Lt.-Col. Hon. A. C. (Aberdeen)
Sykes, Sir C. (Huddersfield)


Hartshorn, V.
Murray, Dr. D. (Western Isles)
Taylor, J. (Dumbarton)


Hayward, Major Evan
Murray, John (Leeds, W.)
Terrell, Capt. R. (Henley, Oxford)


Henderson, Major V. L.
Murray, William (Dumfries)
Thomas, Brig.-Gen. Sir O. (Anglesey)


Hennessy, Major G.
Nall, Major Joseph
Thomson, F. C. (Aberdeen, S.)


Hebert, Denniss (Hertford)
Neal, Arthur
Thomson, T. (Middlesbrough, W.)


Hewart, Rt. Hon. Sir Gordon
Newman, Major J. (Finchley, M'ddx.)
Thorns, G. R. (Wolverhampton, E.)


Hills, Major J. W. (Durham)
Newman, Sir R. H. S. D. (Exeter)
Tootill, Robert


Hinds, John
Nield, Sir Herbert
Townley, Maximilan G.


Hodge, Rt. Hon. John
Norman, Major Rt. Hon. Sir Henry
Turton, Edmund Russborough


Hopkins, J. W. W.
Norris, Colonel Sir Henry G.
Walker, Colonel William Hall


Horne, Edgar (Guildford)
Oman, C. W. C.
Wallace, J.


Howard, Major S. G.
Parkinson, John Allen (Wigan)
Walsh, S. (Ince, Lancs.)


Hudson, R. M.
Parry, Major Thomas Henry
Ward-Jackson, Major C. L.


Hunter, Gen. Sir A. (Lancaster)
Peel, Lt.-Col. R. F. (Woodbridge)
Ward, Colonel L. (Kingston-upon-Hull


Hunter-Weston, Lieut.-Gen. Sir A. G.
Pennefather, De Fonblanque
Ward, w. Dudley (Southampton)


Hurd, P. A.
Perkins, Walter Frank
Wardle, George J.


Hurst, Major G. B.
Pollock, Sir Ernest Murray
Waterson, A. E.


Inskip, T. W. H.
Pratt, John William
Watson, Captain John Bertrand


Jackson, Lieut.-Col. Hon. F. S. (York)
Prescott, Major
Wignall, James


Jephcott, A. R.
Pulley, Charles Thornton
Wild, Sir Ernest Edward


Johnstone, J.
Purchase, H. G.
Williams, A. (Consett, Durham)


Jones, G. W. H. (Stoke Newington)
Raffan, Peter Wilson
Williams, Lt.-Com. C. (Tavistock)


Jones, J. (Silvertown)
Rankin, Capt. James S.
Williams, Lt.-Col. Sir R. (Banbury)


Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen)
Ratcliffe, Henry Butler
Williams, Col. Sir R. (Dorset, W.)


Jones, Wm. Kennedy (Hornsey)
Rees, Sir J. D. (Nottingham, E.)
Williamson, Rt. Hon. Sir Archibald


Kenworthy, Lieut.-Commander
Rees, Captain J. Tudor (Barnstaple)
Willoughby, Lt.-Col. Hon. Claud


Kiley, James Daniel
Richardson, Sir Albion (Peckham)
Wills, Lt.-Col. Sir Gilbert Alan H..


King, Commander Douglas
Richardson, Alex. (Gravesend)
Wilson, J. H. (South Shields)


Larmor, Sir J.
Richardson, R. (Houghton)
Wilson-Fox, Henry


Law, Right Hon. A. Bonar (Glasgow)
Robinson, S. (Brecon and Radnor)
Wood, Sir J. (Stalybridge and Hyde)


Lewis, Rt. Hon. J. H. (Univ. Wales)
Robinson, T. (Stretford, Lancs.)
Wood, Major Mackenzie (Aberdeen, C)


Lewis, T. A. (Pontypridd, Glam.)
Rowlands, James
Wood, Major S. Hill- (High Peak)


Lloyd, George Butler
Royden, Sir Thomas
Worsfold, T. Cato


Lorden, John William
Rutherford, Sir W. W. (Edge Hill)
Worthington Evans, Rt. Hon. Sir L.


Lort-Williams, J.
Sanders, Colonel Robert Arthur
Yate, Col. Charles Edward


Loseby, Captain C. E.
Seager, Sir William
Young, Sir F. W. (Swindon)


Lyle, C. E. Leonard (Stratford)
Seddon, J. A.



M'Curdy, Charles Albert
Shaw, Hon. A. (Kilmarnock)



M'Donald, Dr. B. F. P. (Wallasey)
Shaw, Tom (Preston)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Lord E.


M'Laren, Hon. H. D. (Bosworth)
Shaw, Captain W. T. (Forfar)
Talbot and Captain F. Guest.


NOSE.—O.


TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Sir R. Cooper and Brig.-Gen. Crolt.


Lords Amendments considered, and agreed to.

Orders of the Day — GOVERNMENT OF INDIA [SALARIES AND EXPENSES].

Considered in Committee.

Resolved,
That it is expedient to authorise the payment, out of moneys to be provided by Parliament, of the salary of the Secretary of State for India, the salaries of his Undersecretaries, and any other expenses of his Department payable under any Act of the present Session, to make further provision with respect to the Government of India, and the payment, out of the Revenues of India, of any salaries, pensions, or other expenses which may become payable under such Act."—[Mr. Montagu.]

Resolution to be reported To-morrow.

Orders of the Day — NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE [MONEY].

Considered in Committee.

Resolved,
That it is expedient to raise the rate of remuneration to" the purposes of exception from insurance under the National Insurance (Health) Acts. 1911 to 1918, from £100 a year to £250 a year. in pursuance of any Act of the present Session, to alter the rate of remuneration for such purposes."—[Dr. Addison.]

Resolution to be reported To-morrow.

Orders of the Day — RETIRED OFFICERS (CIVIL EMPLOYMENT) [MONEY].

Considered in Committee.

Resolved,
That it is expedient to authorise the Treasury by Order to revoke or modify the
rules as to the civil employment of retired officers in so far as they provide for reductions from civil pay."—[Mr. Baldwin.]

Resolution to be reported Xo-morrow.

Orders of the Day — OFFICIAL SOLICITOR BILL [Lords].

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."

Sir H. NIELD: Can we have some explanation of this Bill from the Attorney-General?

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir G. Hewart): This measure has passed all its stages in another place. It is to provide a remedy for the state of things that will arise on the retirement of the present official solicitor. At the hon. and learned Gentleman is aware, the official solicitor is ordinarily appointed by virtue of his office as receiver in lunacy under the Lunacy Act, and to various other appointments. When the present official solicitor retires, as he shortly will, unless this Bill is passed all these appointments will be vacated and the necessary continuity will not be maintained. The result would be, if the Bill were not passed, that some hundreds of separate Orders would have to be made in certain cases. All this Bill provides is that the official solicitor should be succeeded by his successor, and that, without making special Orders, that successor will step into the various appointments which have been made in regard to the office.

Sir H. NIELD: I have nothing further to say. I am sure the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not be displeased at having been afforded an opportunity of making a statement on what does seem a strange state of things, in that Parliament has not before made a similar provision There has been, to my knowledge, a change in the office since it was created. Nothing could be more appalling than the prospect of having to make new Orders in so many cases. The present position is hard to understand.

Bill accordingly read a second time.

Sir G. HEWART: I beg to move
That this House will immediately resolve itself into the Committee on the Bill.
I hope, with the assent of all interested in the Bill, that we may be able to get the remaining stages to-night.

Bill accordingly considered in Committee.

[Mr. WHITLEY in the Chair.]

CLAUSE 1.—(Powers and Duties of Official Solicitor for the Time Being.)

Where under or by virtue of any order, grant, or appointment (whether made before or after the passing of this Act) any powers and duties have been or are hereafter conferred or imposed on the Official Solicitor to the Supreme Court in England as such, then, unless and until the Supreme Court or a judge thereof otherwise directs in any particular case, those powers may be exercised and those duties shall be performed by the holder of the office for the time being, and no further order or appointment shall be necessary by reason only of the person on whom the powers and duties were conferred or imposed dying or ceasing to hold office, and any bond entered into by the Official Solicitor as such in connection with any grant of administration shall be binding on the holder of the office for the time being, and any property vested in the Official Solicitor as such shall, on his dying or ceasing to hold office, without any conveyance, assignment or transfer, become vested in his successor in like manner as it was vested in him.

Sir G. HEWART: I beg to move to leave but the words "as such" ["Supreme Court in England as such"] If the Bill remain as it is its operation will be limited to the duties and powers of the official solicitor ' as such. "The gentlemen appointed is appointed to the various positions I have enumerated because he is the official solicitor.

Sir H. NIELD: Appointed by name?

Sir G. HEWART: Yes; but we do not want it "as such." If the words remain in the Bill the effect will be that the operation of the Bill to some extent will be diminished.

Amendment agreed to.

Sir G. HEWART: I beg to move, after the word "thereof" ["or a judge thereof otherwise direct"], to insert the words
in matters and proceedings under the Lunacy Act or of a Master in Lunacy.
The effect of the present words will be that the Supreme Court would be given certain powers in lunacy matters. It is very often lunacy matters which the official solicitor is appointed over. In order to conform with the law I propose to add the words I have suggested.

Sir H. NIELD: I agree that these words are eminently desirable. There are so many matters which are hung up for a long time by reason of difficulties involved
on questions of this kind that I welcome any measure of further jurisdiction.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 (Short Title) ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Bill reported; as amended, considered; read the third time, and passed, with Amendments.

Orders of the Day — SOLICITORS (ARTICLED CLERKS) BILL [Lords].

Order for Second Reading read.

Sir G. HEWART: I beg to move
That the Bill be now read a second time." 
This is a Bill to extend the provisions of Section 1 of the Solicitors (Articled Clerks) Act of 1918, which allows an articled clerk to count towards the period of his service in articles any time he served with the forces or on an approved public service connected with the War, or as a prisoner or an interned person in an enemy or neutral country. The Act imposes no limit on the amount of time which may be reckoned. The normal period for articles is five years, but that is reduced to four years in the case of men who have matriculated at a university, and to three years in cases of men who have taken a university degree. That Bill does not give any advantage to a person who, by reason of his service in the War, has come to be an articled clerk at a later date to the date he would otherwise have become a clerk. It is felt that that is an unfair position, and that something ought to be done for those men whoso entrance into the profession has been delayed by their military service. This Bill has been framed to extend the Act of 1918. It does not take away or diminish the advantages of that Act, but it does provide that persons articled at any time before the expiration of one year after the termination of the War may count his service subject to the limitations that any such person cannot reckon more of his military service than will leave him with two years to serve, and I think that proposal will do justice all round.

Sir H. NIELD: The War has made conditions which make it impossible for us to refuse to pass legislation of this kind. The only thing I have to say about it is that it is not satisfactory legislation in theory,
but the conditions of the War have made it absolutely necessary that these young men shall not be prejudiced by having willingly served their country in some cases under great domestic difficulties. Many of them have had to wait in the ranks until the Military Service Acts allowed them to go. This Bill brings into line those who have not been able to begin their article, and they should be treated in the same way. I think two years is a fair margin in the case of men who are only liable to serve three, and that will leave them with only one year. Of course that is only in cases where they are qualified men. This is one of the circumstances of the War, and we are doing justice to a very considerable class who ought to have this justice done to them.

Mr. G. THORNE: I entirely agree that no one will regard this as a proper or right course to take. and in ordinary conditions no one would suggest it. What is being proposed is entirely due to war conditions, and the object is to do justice to those young men who have been prejudiced by the War. I am very grateful to the Government for having brought this measure forward.

Mr. TOOTILL: I would like to ask the Attorney-General whether some attempt could not be made to rectify the same grievance which applies to apprenticeship in general trades and the handicrafts? When we take into consideration the fact that many parents have made great sacrifices to give their boys a very good training in some handicraft or trade, and they have suffered during the War just in the same circumstances as the Attorney-General has very properly described, I think justice should be done to them as well, and to all classes of the community. I was wondering whether something could not be done to put that matter right, and to reassure parents that their sons who have served so gallantly in the War should be provided for by Statute in sonic way or other to make them more satisfied than they are, because they are labouring under the deep feeling of dissatisfaction because of the fact that they are now handicapped so seriously in consequence of this circumstance. I wish the Attorney-General could give us some kind of assurance on this point.

Sir G. HEWART: My hon. Friend is well aware that, although the topic which he has referred to now is suggested by this
Bill, the cases he has mentioned do not arise upon it. I quite see the grievance he has mentioned, and which this Bill seeks to remedy in relation to articled clerks. I quite agree that the subject which lie mentions is worthy of consideration, and I shall be happy to consider it. If my hon. Friend will furnish me with any information he has upon the matter, showing especially the nature and extent of the difficulties to which ho refers, I can promise that I shall give it my best and earnest consideration.

Bill accordingly read a second time.

Resolved,
That this House will immediately resolve itself into the Committee on the Bill."—[Sir G. Hewart.]

Bill accordingly considered in Committee.

[Mr. WHITLEY in the Chair.]

CLAUSE 1.—(Extension of Section 1 of 8 and 9 Geo. 5 c. 16.)

Section one of the Solicitors (Articled Clerks) Act, 1918, which provides for the reckoning of certain periods of service in connection with the present war, and of periods of detention or internment (hereinafter referred to as "war service"), as service as an articled clerk, shall apply to any parson who becomes an articled clerk at any time during the continuance of the present war or before the expiration of one year after the termination thereof, as it applies to an articled clerk:

Provided that—

(a) in the application of this Section to the case of a person whose term of service is regulated by Section two of the Solicitors Act, 1860, or any enactment amending that Section, three years shall be substituted for one year; and
(b) where a person has become an articled clerk after the termination of his war service, his war service shall, for the purposes of the said Section one as amended by this Section, be reckoned only to such extent as will leave a period of two years to be actually served by him pursuant to his articles, and where a person has become an articled clerk during the course of his war service the whole of that part of his war service which takes place after he was articled shall be reckoned for the said purposes, but that part of his war service which took place before he was articled shall be reckoned only to such extent as aforesaid.

Sir G. HEWART: I beg to move, at the end of paragraph (a), to insert the words
(b) Where the Law Society is satisfied in any particular case that a person has been retained in war service after the termination of the present war, this Section shall have effect
with respect to such person as if the termination of his war service had coincided with the termination of the War.
The sole object of this Amendment is the better to give effect to the main object of the Bill. There are some cases in which those gentlemen whom the Bill is designed to help may be or will be retained in the service after the termination of the War, and the proviso which I desire to add is to give them the benefit in respect of that period they would have had if the termination of the period of their service had coincided, as it might have done, with the termination of the War.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 (Short Title, Citation and Extent) ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Bill reported; as amended, considered.

Motion made, and Question proposed.
That the Bill be now read the third time."— [Mr. Pratt.]

Sir H. NIELD: Does this Bill also provide that the benefit shall apply to examinations?

Sir G. HEWART: It does not affect examinations at all.

Bill accordingly read the third time, and passed, with an Amendment.

Orders of the Day — PUBLIC NOTARIES (ARTICLED CLERKS) BILL [Lords],

Order for Second Reading read.

Sir G. HEWART: I beg to move
That the Bill be now lead a second time.
Its object is to make with reference to articled clerks to Public Notaries precisely the same provision as the last Bill made in regard to articled clerks to solicitors.

Bill accordingly read a second time.

Resolved,
That this House will immediately resolve itself into the Committee on the Bill."—[Mr. Pratt.]

Bill accordingly considered in Committee.

[Mr. WHITLEY in the Chair.]

Clause 1 (Reckoning of Time of War Service as Service under Articles) ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Committee report Progress; to sit again To-morrow.

Orders of the Day — MATRIMONIAL CAUSES (DOMINION TROOPS) BILL [Lords].

Order for Second Reading read.

Sir G. HEWART: I beg to move:
That the Bill be now read a second time.
This is a measure designed to deal with difficulties arising from the fact that members of the Australian Imperial force and of other Imperial forces have contracted marriages in this country, although they are domiciled outside the United Kingdom, and the effect of the Bill is to render it possible, in case of misconduct on the part of either of the parties to the marriage, to give the Courts here power to pronounce decrees as if the parties were domiciled here.

Sir H. NIELD: I wonder a question of this sort coud not have been foreseen when last we dealt with this matter upstairs, and we did at very great length. However, no one need be surprised that many marriages have been contracted between members of the Australian Imperial Force and women of this country. It would be absurd to suggest that the Courts of this country should be ousted in their jurisdiction merely because under the law at present a person must proceed to the country where the person whom against he is proceeding is domiciled. Therefore I shall offer no opposition to the Bill.

Bill accordingly read a second time.

Resolved,
That this House will immediately resolve itself into the Committee on the Bill."—[Mr. Pratt.]

Bill accordingly considered in Committee, and reported without Amendment; read the third time, and passed, without Amendment.

Orders of the Day — GRANT OF ADMINISTRATION(BONDS) BILL.— [Lords.]

Order for Second Reading read.

Sir G. HEWART: I beg to move
That the Bill he now read a second time.
This is the last of a series of little measures designed to assist in the administration of the law, and the purpose of it is to remove an obstacle to the administration of business in the Probate Court. It is required by Statute that the bond given by the administrator should
be given to the President. During the vacancy caused by the death of Sir Samuel Evans, there was no one to whom a bond could be given, and very many hundreds of administrations could not be proceeded with. The Bill proposes to remove that kind of difficulty by providing that a bond during a vacancy in the Presidency may be given to the registrar of the principal Probate register.

Bill accordingly read a second time.

Resolved,
That this House will immediately resolve itself into the Committee? on the Bill."—[Mr. Pratt.]

Bill accordingly considered in Committee, and reported without Amendment; read the third time, and passed, without Amendment.

Orders of the Day — BRITISH MERCANTILE MERCHANT UNIFORM BILL.— [Lords.]

Order for Second Reading read.

The PARLAMENTARY SECRETARY of the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Bridge-man): I beg to move
That the Bill be now read a second time.
This is a small Bill, which has come down from the House of Lords. In 1917 representations were made by navigating and engineer officers in favour of the institution of a standard uniform for the Merchant Service, and the Board of Trade appointed a Committee representative of those officers, shipowners, the Admiralty, and the Board of Trade to advise them. The majority recommended that a standard uniform should be formally instituted, but should not be made compulsory on board ship, although if it was desired to wear uniform on shore on other than ship's business, the uniform should not be any other than the standard. After these Reports were published the officers of the association pressed for something to be done, and an Order in Council was passed in September, 1918, instituting the uniform, but it was not competent under the Order in Council to exact any adequate penalties, and a promise was made last Session, on behalf of the Board of Trade, to introduce legislation for this purpose. The uniform is of blue cloth, and in some features follows the lines of the naval uniform, though it has distinct characteristics. The Admiralty approved the Bill. It is in no sense a naval uniform, but a
civilian one, and the administration of all matters connected with it rests with the Board of Trade and not with the Admiralty.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: I welcome this Bill in every sense of the ward. It has long been desired by men of the Merchant Service to have a standard uniform. I beg, however, that the House will not take all its stages now, as I wish j to put down an Amendment.

Mr. BRIDGEMAN: There is no intention of taking more than the Second Reading.

Bill accordingly read a second time, and committed to a Standing Committee.

Orders of the Day — LAW AGENTS APPRENTICESHIP (WAR SERVICES) (SCOTLAND) BILL [Lords].

Order for Second Reading read.

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL for SCOTLAND (Mr. Morison): I beg to move
That the Bill be now read a second time.
This is a corresponding Bill to Order No. 7 on the Paper applying to England, the scope and purpose of which have been explained. It applies the provisions of the English Bill to Scotland in every respect.

Bill accordingly read the second time.

Resolved,
That this House will immediately resolve itself into the Committee on the Bill."—[Mr. Pratt.]

Bill accordingly considered in Committee, and reported, without Amendment; read the third time, and passed, without Amendment.

Orders of the Day — WEIGHTS AND MEASURES (LEATHER MEASUREMENT) BILL [Lords].

Considered in Committee, and reported, without Amendment; read the third time, and passed, without Amendment.

Orders of the Day — DORMANT BANK BALANCES AND UNCLAIMED SECURITIES BILL.

Mr. Beckett, Sir John Bethell, Mr. Bottomley, Colonel Moore-Brabazon, Mr. William Carter, Lord Hugh Cecil, Major Sir Edward Coates, Sir Clement Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Martin Conway, Mr. Clement Edwards, Mr. Hogge, Sir Edgar Jones, Major Lowthcr, Major Watts Morgan, and Major M'Kenzie Wood nominated members of the Select Committee on the Dormant Bank Balances and Unclaimed Securities Bill.

Ordered, That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers, and records:

Ordered, That Five be the quorum.— [Mr. Pratt.]

Orders of the Day — STATEMENT OF RATES BILL.

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

Motion made, and Question,
That this House do now adjourn.
put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at One minute before Nine o'clock.